My third
Midsummer Night's Dream in less than a month, and there's been at
least three other productions or adaptations in London recently that I could have
booked but decided not to (plus a TV version I'm saving for when I'm a bit less
Dreamed out.) The RSC called their version
A Play For The Nation, and
that seems apt enough as it might take the entire nation to cast all these
productions. At least Simon Evans' at Southwark Playhouse requires less of a hefty
cast list than usual, instead putting more pressure on each of its seven actors.
Evans turns it into a play-within-a-play-within-a-play, the show opening with a cast
using their own names and recreating the first scene with the Mechanicals - except
instead of
Pyramus and Thisbe, they're trying to figure out how to
share out the 17 major roles in
A Midsummer Night's Dream itself. Only
Melanie Fullbrook gets just the one role as the cack-handed fairy Puck, who also
serves as narrator, helping to fill in the gaps.
