Midsummer's Night Dream Reloaded - Adelaide Fringe
Mon, 1 Mar 2004, 07:17 amDanny2 posts in thread
Midsummer's Night Dream Reloaded - Adelaide Fringe
Mon, 1 Mar 2004, 07:17 amA MIDSUMMER'S NIGHT DREAM RELOADED
Scrambled Prince Theatre Company
(Eltham High School's Touring Drama Company, Victoria)
Mercury Cinema, Adelaide
Season Closed
To begin with, I apologise in advance for not revealing the names of any of the actors or the writer/director because I don't know them - I realised after the show had finished that I hadn't bought a programme and went looking for one, only to be informed that they hadn't had time to produce one! Oh well.
As you would expect, "Reloaded" was a retelling of Shakespeare's famous comedy. This production used a mix of live acting and film, sometimes intermixed - which would have worked better, if there could have been light on the actors while the film was playing (which, considering this was shown in a *cinema* and not a theatre didn't work so well).
A large cast of age ranging 16-24 aptly abbreviated Midsummer's down to an hour, with plenty of modern humour to keep things rolling along. However, I think it was assumed that the audience already knew the story of Shaker's play, considering that most of the plot was just breezed over in order to make way for the laughs.
After a opening credits film sequence introducing the main characters, the play started with a council meeting (of Athens), with the Mayor being loud boisterous, mysoginistic and of course, thicker than two planks. This scene set up the love quadrangle between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, and also the idea of the "film festival".
The plot involving the lovers was emphasised quite heavily, and unfortunately, Oberon, Titania and Puck didn't feature too much, which from my vague recollections of the actual Shakespeare play, seems unfair. In fact, Puck only got one spoken line in the entire play, despite still being there causing the mischief.
Bottom's "film-making" troupe were great, especially Bottom himself, played as a overtly camp (although not *gay*) film director "artiste" as they prepared to make their cross-genre film of Pyramis and Thisbe.
The role of the Mayor (Thesius?) was greatly expanded from what I remember, mainly because of the talented actor playing this role, with gusto. He and Bottom were the standout performers, never losing character, and showing enormous stage presence. Unfortunately, because these two were larger-than-life performers, it made most of the others look fairly bad, when in fact, most of them can act quite well on their own - it was just their interaction with all the others that lost a bit.
I was also told that they didn't finish editing the film until the morning before opening night, and hence they hadn't had many rehearsals of the entire play (with film parts intercut) and unfortunately, this lack of rehearsal showed.
The funniest scenes were any involving Bottom's troupe, mainly due to the complete over-the-top-ness of Bottom himself (complete with beret and bow tie), and a brilliant video sequence parodying SBS's The Movie Show, with fantastic impersonations of David Stratton and Margaret Pomerantz reviewing "Pyramus and Thisbe". For this alone, this play was worth seeing.
I think that this troop, consisting of current and previous scholars of drama at Eltham High School, will be putting on another production of Midsummer's Night Dream Reloaded at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in April, so be sure to catch it.
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Scrambled Prince Theatre Company
(Eltham High School's Touring Drama Company, Victoria)
Mercury Cinema, Adelaide
Season Closed
To begin with, I apologise in advance for not revealing the names of any of the actors or the writer/director because I don't know them - I realised after the show had finished that I hadn't bought a programme and went looking for one, only to be informed that they hadn't had time to produce one! Oh well.
As you would expect, "Reloaded" was a retelling of Shakespeare's famous comedy. This production used a mix of live acting and film, sometimes intermixed - which would have worked better, if there could have been light on the actors while the film was playing (which, considering this was shown in a *cinema* and not a theatre didn't work so well).
A large cast of age ranging 16-24 aptly abbreviated Midsummer's down to an hour, with plenty of modern humour to keep things rolling along. However, I think it was assumed that the audience already knew the story of Shaker's play, considering that most of the plot was just breezed over in order to make way for the laughs.
After a opening credits film sequence introducing the main characters, the play started with a council meeting (of Athens), with the Mayor being loud boisterous, mysoginistic and of course, thicker than two planks. This scene set up the love quadrangle between Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, and also the idea of the "film festival".
The plot involving the lovers was emphasised quite heavily, and unfortunately, Oberon, Titania and Puck didn't feature too much, which from my vague recollections of the actual Shakespeare play, seems unfair. In fact, Puck only got one spoken line in the entire play, despite still being there causing the mischief.
Bottom's "film-making" troupe were great, especially Bottom himself, played as a overtly camp (although not *gay*) film director "artiste" as they prepared to make their cross-genre film of Pyramis and Thisbe.
The role of the Mayor (Thesius?) was greatly expanded from what I remember, mainly because of the talented actor playing this role, with gusto. He and Bottom were the standout performers, never losing character, and showing enormous stage presence. Unfortunately, because these two were larger-than-life performers, it made most of the others look fairly bad, when in fact, most of them can act quite well on their own - it was just their interaction with all the others that lost a bit.
I was also told that they didn't finish editing the film until the morning before opening night, and hence they hadn't had many rehearsals of the entire play (with film parts intercut) and unfortunately, this lack of rehearsal showed.
The funniest scenes were any involving Bottom's troupe, mainly due to the complete over-the-top-ness of Bottom himself (complete with beret and bow tie), and a brilliant video sequence parodying SBS's The Movie Show, with fantastic impersonations of David Stratton and Margaret Pomerantz reviewing "Pyramus and Thisbe". For this alone, this play was worth seeing.
I think that this troop, consisting of current and previous scholars of drama at Eltham High School, will be putting on another production of Midsummer's Night Dream Reloaded at the Melbourne Comedy Festival in April, so be sure to catch it.
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Re: Midsummer's Night Dream Reloaded - Adelaide Fringe
Mon, 1 Mar 2004, 07:20 amPS. Sorry for not being able to spell misogynistic on the first try :) And any other spelling or grammar errors, just blame it on letting my brain doing the writing and not concentrating on this sort of thing.
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