Unrequited and unwanted love abounds in possibly the most magical of Shakespeare’s comedies. Read more …
Four young Athenian lovers flee to the forest where they fall foul of the manipulations of fairies. Oberon, King of the Fairies, Titania, his Queen, and fantastical sprite, Puck conjure a series of increasingly funny complications as the mortals try to find true love with the right partners.
Directed by Matthew Lenton, this promises to be a bold and inventive new production full of romance, enchantment, the glory of human folly and the power of nature.
Despite [some] arresting ideas – often realised with striking beauty on Kai Fischer's set – the production scores less well in making you care about the lovers.
The lovers’ scenes are deliciously realised...Pyramus and Thisby is an eye-watering delight.
What Dream is sure to do, is take you to a new world, and let you enjoy being there for an evening.
This is a bracing, refreshing reimagining of the play, and one that balances comedy and pathos to remarkable effect.
Lenton’s production remains both richly comic, and strikingly faithful to Shakespeare’s verse; his young company follow the text as if it were a golden thread guiding them through this wildwood of deception and illusion, and it richly repays their efforts.
This is – despite it’s winter-costumed twist – a simple, solid Shakespeare production that everyone can enjoy.
Vanishing Point artistic director Matthew Lenton has come up with a wonderfully cheeky conceit for his first ever Shakespeare production.
In a play where magic is at its core, Vanishing Point succeed in conjuring up an enjoyable and mystical performance, aided no end by Kai Fischer’s mesmerising lighting and stage design. However, some of Lenton’s choices – whilst as inventive as ever – stop it short of being truly spellbinding.
Vanishing Point's Matthew Lenton on the company's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Shakespeare comes in from the cold
Preview: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Royal Lyceum, Edinburgh from Friday October 19, 2012, until Saturday November 17, 2012. More info: www.lyceum.org.uk
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