Photos by Robert Day

The Stage Review

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By Michael Coveney

Shakespeare is a rarity in the cash-strapped reps, but Gary Sefton’s brilliant Northampton Dream in the always delightful Theatre Royal with just eight actors (and a junior team of fairies) shows how to make a virtue of necessity and visual poetry in motion.

The spirit of invention is conjured by Colin Ryan’s Irish Puck, and is obviously surviving this interim period between Laurie Sansom (who’s gone to the National Theatre of Scotland) and James Dacre, the incoming artistic director.
A very physical performance is beautifully lit by Richard Godin, with the cast clambering all over Ti Green’s clever set of platforms, windows and silk drapes.

There’s a hint of the 1920s, but nothing too much to prevent Joseph Alessi doubling a stuffed-shirt Egeus with a hairy-chested, turd-dropping Bottom plus donkey teeth more menacing than Liverpool striker/biter Luis Suarez’s.

Newcomer Charlie Archer is a lovely, understated Demetrius, surprisingly stripped to the buff by the equally expository Lysander of Oliver Gomm in the riotous forest quartet scene - they’re dancing cheek to cheek, these two, not cheek by jowl.

But they can’t begin to compete with the wonderful Hermia of Naomi Sheldon (also a gloriously prim Quince, and a mattress sandwich of a Wall), a naturally gifted comedian, or Frances McNamee as a bespectacled Helena with a snorting speech defect.
And although the artisans’ play - spoons and washboard to the fore - is only done for Theseus and Hippolyta (Silas Carson and Amy Robbins do the usual doubling with dreadlocked, face-painted fairy royalty), reclining on downstage cushions, all fears that the show might run out of actors, and steam, are never realised.

Week Four From The Rehearsal Room

I'm writing my last blog of the rehearsal period from the auditorium looking at our fantastic set designed by Ti Green.

This is always my favourite time, seeing all the actors in costume and the technical wizardry of our lighting and sound designers. Jon has composed some brilliant underscoring and Rich's lighting is really bringing the magic of our A Midsummer Night’s Dream alive.

From the moment all our props started arriving in the last week of rehearsals, the actors have been discovering exciting ways of including them in their performance, and getting on set has added another dimension to the storytelling and given us even more to play with.

All that’s left is to finish off some tech cues and do a dress rehearsal ahead of tonight's preview. It's been a playful and hugely interesting journey, and I have cried sometimes with laughter, so I hope you all enjoy it as much as we have.

Helen Barnett
Assistant Director

PS: If you come back to this page over the following weeks, my friends in the marketing department will be adding production photos and news of press reviews.

Week Three From The Rehearsal Room

Week three and we're starting to see a real shape for the piece now, getting to grips with Act 2 and running Act 1. 

This week we've been working with Flick Ferdinando from the Mr Whatnot cast to help us out with some silk work and some of our actors have surprised even themselves at their aerial skills! I won't give too much away but I can say that some of the cast have been head over heels with the work this week.

We've also been trying out some props for our mechanicals with hilarious effect, and all of our characters are really starting to take on a life of their own. Our cast have also been in fine voice this week and have even been showing off rhythmic prowess with washboards and spoons working on the songs with our Composer and Sound Designer Jon Nicholls. 

We've really been getting to the heart of some of the hardest scenes this week and everyone's taken on the challenge with a (sometimes literal) running jump, so we're all looking forward to doing our first run and seeing the whole show for the first time! 

Helen Barnett
Assistant Director

AUDIO CLIP - Here’s an audio clip of Amy Robbins in rehearsal singing one of Titania’s songs, recorded by BBC Radio Northampton’s Martin Borley, when he came in to do a piece on the play, which will be broadcast on the Breakfast Show. Click to listen.

A Midsummer Night's Dream Trailer

Week Two From The Rehearsal Room

End of week two and with the bank holiday everyone worked extra especially hard to get the rehearsal time in this week, and it really paid off. 

We started the week going over our Act One scenes with a fine tooth comb. One of the challenges of Shakespeare is making sure that the story is really clear, as the language can take longer for our modern ears to process. The cast and Gary have been incredibly creative this week trying out different ways of approaching the language and exploring different ways of saying each line to make the story really clear and to crack open our understanding of the play.  

On Tuesday evening the actors met our younger cast for the first time. It was great to see some of the scenes that they'd worked on separately come together and to have the opportunity to play together to discover what and who the fairies are.

Towards the latter end of the week we started looking at Act Two and tackling the question of who’s in love with who, and when, in the forest. We had some levels and stairways put up in the rehearsal room to replicate the set which really helped us as it meant the actors had a whole new playground to play with. Needless to say jumping, rope swinging and crash mat antics followed. Exciting stuff! 
 

Helen Barnett
Assistant Director

Week One From The Rehearsal Room

So now we're into week two it's time to let you know the gossip of week one!

We started off on an excellent foot on Monday with a brilliant read through after the Meet And Greet. Everyone seemed to really have a joint understanding of the play which is always a good sign for things to come. We took the opportunity in the afternoon to have a really good chat about the context of the piece and get some facts and research out there.

By day two Gary had us all jumping over each other, catching each other and falling over in his physical warm up. With it being a comedy, I think it was really important that we started from a very playful place. For the rest of the morning there was lots of playing with props, cross dressing and general silliness from the actors as they experimented with different characters and outcomes. 

 

Wednesday was a rather cold start filming our trailer out in the woods although it gave the actors a great opportunity to get back to nature and remind themselves what it felt like to frolic amongst the trees. Check out our trailer (coming soon!) for the results of this very brave shoot.

For the rest of the week we began to explore the scenes in Act One, making lots of discoveries for all the characters and really getting to grips with the language and world of the play. We ended a very exciting week by going over all the scenes we had looked at and we realised that it was actually loads!

A very successful week one all round I think.
Helen Barnett
Assistant Director