SATURDAY, JULY 6, 2024



A Midsummer Night's Dream (2024)
Production Photo: Ciaran Bagnall

A carnival of colours for the eyes, a melodic feast for the ears and a literary buffet for the brain awaits us as, for the first time, we, the audience, witness the players of Belfast's Lyric Theatre in the genuinely great outdoors for Jimmy Fay's adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Of course, when you're staging a play outside, many more unpredictable elements can enter the equation, and let's just say that that the sporadic sound of passionate tongues isn't the only lashing we experience during the performance I attend. But the heaviness of the summer rain proves not to be a burden in an atmosphere absolutely packed with energy, enthusiasm and eclecticism.

The first sign that this won't be traditional Shakespeare – or even Baz Luhrmann's, though we do hear twentieth century music both during the interval and after the show – is the parade that makes its way down to the Laganside embankment towards the circular wooden stage at the centre of affairs. Bursts of flame highlight excitement and fieriness, while, in Stuart Marshall's superbly designed staging area, props such as a bicycle, rings in a tree, a hollowed out Beetle (the car, not the insect) and coloured tyres join forces with the beat of an orchestra's drums and bubbles in the air. It is as if the desire and fear for the great heights brought about by the spontaneity and brief joy in the feeling of "love" are being wed to the pain of joyous bubbles bursting in a circle of life while one pedals away to swiftly speed over cracks.

All this wonder, and we've neither been introduced to the characters nor heard a word of Shakespearean language. Not yet, anyway...

For those unfamiliar with the source material, it's essentially three narratives coming together as one – ultimately unified tales of lovers or would-be lovers from Athens, players preparing a play within the play, and fairies in the wood. Such strands lend themselves pretty easily to chaos and conflict, and it is those aspects which director Fay, assistant director Debra Hill (who also acts in the production) and the gifted cast play up marvellously, however unenviable their task may be in the Belfast weather.

Production Photo: Ciaran Bagnall

The timelessly beautiful verse and prose is smartly blended with mercifully small but very effective bursts of contemporary vernacular. The accents, a mixture of the bluntly comical, locally relatable and impressively regal, create a contextual authenticity which enables both audience and cast to fully absorb themselves in the proceedings. Every single actor, creatively costumed with Catherine Kodicek's transcendently vibrant design and visibly inspired by Fleur Mellor's lively and vivid choreography, excels here, the variations in both their costuming and behaviour brilliantly illustrating Shakespeare's heightening of archetypes for comedy and thoughtfulness.

This Midsummer also reads as a clever analysis of young and fleeting "love", where affairs we will never forget, diversions brought about either by circumstance or the intervention of magic, entrench themselves through pressure and emotion rather than peace and trust. I especially enjoy what Meghan Tyler and Jessica Reynolds bring to Helena and Hermia, respectively, in this light, with Tyler in particular delivering Helena's earlier lines in a bitter, sly, resigned manner that only enhances her belief in the supposed "mockery" she later receives from Cillian Lenaghan's Lysander and Ash Rizi's Demetrius. I'm similarly impressed by Lenaghan and Rizi's uniquely passionate portrayals, Lenaghan notably translating Lysander's anger in a manner worthy of a younger David Tennant. There are echoes within their quarrel in the woods of the farce that will ultimately be more prominent when Jo Donnelly's Peter Quince, Steven Calvert's Nick Bottom and their players perform the "tragedy" of Pyramus & Thisbe for us all – a reminder that flat out solemnity is out of the question here, and the production is certainly richer for that.

Even the first meeting of Oberon (Sean Kearns, commanding as always) and Titania (a brilliant Leah Minto) is coloured in hilarity, with the former dressing like a disco king and the latter looking like an icon of the eighties. It appropriately and amusingly equates to two decades sparring with each other, and when Oberon lies down in frustration his appearance is that of a rug ready to be walked over rather than the metaphorical magic carpet he probably wants to be.

Throw in the clowning of Patrick McBrearty's relentlessly watchable Puck and you could have a Midsummer that amounts to theatrical overload, but Fay and the company keep everything in tune. It is, as perhaps one of the play's most famous characters might put it, a ballad of a bottomless dream – an enticingly detailed vision ingeniously realised by great actions, words and minds for everyone at the theatre to appreciate and enjoy.

Simon Fallaha

A Midsummer Night's Dream runs at Belfast's Lyric Theatre until Sunday July 7. For more information click here.