The Stage

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Published Monday 12 July 2010 at 16:39 by Derek Smith

Choosing between spending a lunch hour sitting on a bench trying to stop pigeons pecking at your panini or inside a small, historic venue watching energetic, enthused fringe theatre seems a pretty easy decision. As it proved here, for a varied, 40-strong audience, made up of local office workers, tourists and others of all ages.

Nick Danan (Puck) and Luke Kempy (Oberon) in A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Bridewell Theatre

The choice by C Company of putting on Shakespeare’s enduring and always endearing love fantasy is a wise one too. Given the current economic gloom, Chekhov would be unlikely to get office workers skipping back to their desks, and given the performance has to be squeezed into just 45 minutes, there’s certainly no time to hang around waiting for Godot. Every Midsummer Night’s Dream needs an alluring Puck, and in Nick Danan, the production has exactly that - he’s confident on stage, yet with essential touches of eccentricity. Luke Kemp, as Oberon, looks supremely confident for an actor only just out of drama school (Arts Ed).

More than anything, it’s an impressive ensemble effort, one that injects plenty of humour and only occasionally loses its impetus. As for the other key role of Bottom, Paul Harnett simply revels in it. Of course, liberties are taken, but that’s part of the charm of watching a classic work creatively condensed by a talented young cast into not much more time than it takes for your cappuccino to cool down.