The Stage

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Published Monday 28 June 2010 at 11:24 by Neil Bonner

Chapterhouse know all about the vagaries of open-air theatre, touring as they do several productions across the UK and Ireland during the summer months.

Their staging of this play was washed out at Stoke just a few nights earlier but this time the weather lived up to the title. And the glorious Botanical Gardens provided the perfect setting for a lively version of this Shakespearean comedy, in which even resident peacocks played a part.

The staging was necessarily simple, if a little cramped, and even without amplification every word delivered by the enthusiastic cast could be clearly heard across the lawns.

With the inevitable restrictions of a touring company, some ingenious multi-tasking is required. Thus we have the fairies represented by the actors parading large, flappy-winged butterflies held aloft by, and operated from, long poles.

Annabel Bates makes an impressively feisty Titania, while Rosa Glover is equally engaging, giving her lovelorn Helena a comically hangdog aura. Adam Diggle, though, is a somewhat restrained Bottom and could make more of the huge comic potential there.

The nimble-toed and seemingly rubber-jointed Martin McCreadie is a perfect Puck, at once amusing and slightly sinister as he moves around the stage area and often amongst the picnicking audience. And Miles Eagling uses Snout’s Pyramus and Thisbe wall scene to great comic effect.

Musical items were performed beautifully and, even with the accompaniment of the peacocks, added hugely to the wispy, mystical air of the evening. A charming, accessible and most enjoyable production.