J. M. Barrie’s
Dear Brutus may take its title from
Julius Caesar, but the Shakespeare play it borrows most overtly from is
A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Lob (Robin Hooper) is a puckish – literally – old man who’s invited a group of strangers with one thing in common to spend the week at his home. As his guests try to figure out what their mysterious common characteristic is, they hear a local legend of a magical wood that appears in a different spot every Midsummer’s Eve; anyone who enters it is never seen again. The enchanted wood
does appear, of course, and most of the guests do enter it, but in a three-act structure that’s like a much better-done version of
The Passing of the Third Floor Back, they do all emerge again, all changed to varying degrees. This is a play full of wild variations in tone, as what each group of characters discovers in the wood is very different.
