What a wonderful idea to bring Shakespeare to private squares across London. It’s a dreamlike opportunity to enter these squares we never get to access but try to peek into discreetly when we happen to walk by them (who doesn’t want a private garden, right?). And when the show is A Midsummer Night’s Dream shortly after actual midsummer, you can’t ask for a better occasion to go out. During the show I attended, the sunset provided excellent lighting, shining through the trees and landing elegantly on the actors’ faces. I actually looked up to check whether that wasn’t just light attached to one of the trees above me.
Director Tatty Hennessy places the play during the 1920s in Britain, a country bruised by battle and economic hardship. Theseus and Hippolyta are a British-German couple rigidly following order and law, preventing the young lovers Hermia and Lysander to marry. Meanwhile, a group of actors are chaotically preparing a play to present before the Duke and Duchess. A few miles away, deep in a magical forest, fairies are quarrelling, disturbing nature, and casting spells on each other and the humans who enter the forest.
