Wednesday 14 March, the day in which Madame Palmer’s Rm14 literacy class had the privilege to experience the spectacle of a play performed by Buckingham’s Company. The play executed to the students on that day was the wonderful, A Midsummer’s Night Dream written by the famous playwright William Shakespeare in 1596, now performed, in front of my peers and I, almost half a millennium later.
No performance that I have ever seen before has ever truly captured the essence of the play quite like Dr Miles Gregory’s version of A Midsummer’s Night Dream did when performed by Buckingham’s Company at the Pop-Up-Globe. Expressions clearly written across actor’s faces completely conveyed the message of emotion, be it happy, sad or even crazy, as expertly as a play ever has.
Dr Miles Gregory, the Artistic Director and founder of the Pop-Up-Globe, gathered together wonderful costumes, original Shakespearean dialect, Maori folklore and modern elements whipped them into a pot and expertly mixed them together to create his wonderful interpretation of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. In Dr Miles Gregory’s, A Midsummer’s Night Dream the three worlds mixed seamlessly yet being completely separated at the same time, the Fairies world, soaked in Maori culture and mischievous behavior, the world of the lovers not chaotic nor sane yet an emotional rollercoaster and the court of Athens, an overwhelming sense of hierarchy with a bit of love sprinkled in.
When William Shakespeare wrote A Midsummer’s Night Dream all those hundreds of years ago, he meant for it to be humorous and Dr Miles Gregory could definitely flex his muscles in that particular field because what he produced would crack a smile on even the most solemn of solemn people. The cast of A Midsummer’s Night Dream were the perfect fit for their parts, having every scene, every line hilarious.
Overall the feeling of A Midsummer’s Night Dream was a lighthearted mischievous mood that ‘turns your frown upside down’. Had William Shakespeare been alive to experience this version of his play, he would have applauded it.
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