A Midsummer Night's Dream - Liverpool Everyman - 21/03/2015

The iron tongue of midnight hath told twelve;

Lovers, to bed; ’tis almost fairy time.

When the Everyman does Shakespeare we expect it to have an edge, especially when the play is one with a supernatural element to it. In his new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Director Nick Bagnall casts a dark spell over his characters and audience alike and, along with the mischievous humour, he excavates some of the shadowy imaginings that haunt our dream time.

For his first production in his new role as Associate Director at the Everyman and Playhouse, Nick Bagnall has chosen to work with a former collaborator, designer Ashley Martin-Davis. They shared a vision of Shakespeare’s Dream in which there would be none of the obvious visual cues such as trees, moon and fairy wings, preferring to work in a more abstract setting whereby the audience could invoke their own imaginings.

The Athenian court of the opening is alluded to by the plinths of columns with the rest of the stage relatively unadorned. Peter Mumford’s lighting sets the tone for the production, and while the colours of light and costume shift dramatically from scene to scene, it remains in a variety of striking monochromes until a blaze of colour announces the final act.

I would hesitate to say that this is a ‘modern dress’ rendering, as many of the costumes are evocative of other times and places, but the school uniforms of the young lovers in the early scenes contribute strongly to our belief in them as teenagers. The mechanicals too, in their hi-vis work gear, bring us firmly down to familiar earth. It is the trip to fairy-land that flies into fancy, even without its fairy wings, with a dramatic and transformative scene change that takes us into a bewildering wasteland and seems to double the size of the Everyman’s open stage. From this point the action shifts a gear and the entrances and exits become even more imaginative.

Garry Cooper and Sharon Duncan-Brewster are our Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, while Puck has shifted gender and is played by a spritely Cynthia Erivo, who floats about the stage wielding her cane like some spectral ringmaster. The former pair have great poise as the Athenian Duke and his mistress. Cooper presents a malevolent form when he reappears as a troubled King of the Fairies and Duncan-Brewster’s Fairy Queen shimmers with light and passion.

Andrew Schofield appears as a spry site foreman as Peter Quince, assembling his motley crew of overalled players to rehearse their theatricals. Michael Hawkins is a sharp Robin Starveling /Moonshine, who seems a little confused by his dog, and Ozzie Yue plays Snug, his Lion putting me in mind of Bert Lahr’s creation in the Wizard of Oz. Alan Stocks (also a suitably enraged Egeus) is Tom Snout, who bears a witty wall. Lewis Bray (late of Cartoonopolis) is Flute, the bellows mender, whose turn as Thisbe is a sight to behold. And of he who plays Pyramus? Let’s just say that Dean Nolan’s Bottom has to be seen to be believed. It is a larger than life rendering in which there are moments when he could almost be channelling Brian Blessed.

Hermia and Helena are played by Charlotte Hope and Emma Curtis. They bring a naivety and schoolgirlish coyness to the parts but are equally able to find real venom when roused. Matt Whitchurch and Tom Varey are their confused lovers Demetrius and Lysander, and both have great charm and energy in their performances. The speed of delivery in the exchanges of this quartet is breathless in places, but even from the back row of the stalls I didn’t miss a syllable.

James Fortune’s music is a mixture of recorded sound and onstage performance, including recording work from Members of the Young Everyman Playhouse, and as well as creating the soundscape for the play the music occasionally finds humour of its own.

I have remarked in an earlier posting that I saw performances of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the old Everyman in January 1983, which broke the mould of theatre for me and made me fall in love with the Everyman space. This play is as open to reinvention as the theatre itself and invites directors to do something bold and new with it.

Nick Bagnall’s production finds aspects of light and shade that bring the work to the stage with renewed freshness and excitement. As well as exploring dusty corners of the text he also reaches out into the new Everyman space making maximum use of its openness, and we see more of the building’s capacity to surprise.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream lasts for approximately 3 hours, including one interval set between acts 3 and 4. It runs at Liverpool Everyman until Saturday 18th April. There is an age recommendation of 14+ due to one very brief scene with sexual innuendo and partial nudity.

Production photography (c) Gary Carlton:

 

Tom Varey and Charlotte Hope in rehearsal - image (c) Brian Roberts

Hope Place – Liverpool Everyman – 09/05/2014

We were fine until he came along. With his history this and history that.

Note: As this posting was written following the first preview of this new play, some scenes referred to may have subseqeuntly changed.

The first thing that strikes you as you walk into the Everyman auditorium is Peter McKintosh’s immense set. Every square inch of the stage floor and the walls covered in detail and the frontage of a Georgian house to the rear, reaching upward out of sight behind the technical grid. Before the opening much of what is on the forestage is partially obscured by projection effects but scene by scene we find that the house is effectively turned inside out on itself, so that we can see a series of interiors as well as the comings and goings in the street.

While much of the action takes place in the basement kitchen of number 8 Hope Place and in the street outside, other scenes take us round the corner to the very spot on which the present Everyman Theatre stands and it is here that the play begins in the year 1699. While the main characters are living in the present day, intermittent flashbacks evoke memories – both theirs and those of others – and it is this sense of a shared history that holds the story together.

Maggie lives alone in the house, her family having moved away. None of them far, but they’ve all gone off and had lives while she has stayed home to care for her parents until they had both gone. But families usually come together for a funeral and it’s their mother’s that brings Maggie’s sister Veronica, her brothers Eric and Jack and her niece Josie back to Hope Place.

Along with Josie is her new boyfriend Simon, the posh one from Birkenhead, and he decides that as this family have lived for generations in the same house they’ll provide a rich source of material for his PhD thesis, which is to be based on oral history. This is the simple premise for unfolding the lives and memories of the characters and blending them with the history of the locality. A portrait of ordinary local people of Liverpool and the Hope Street area they live in. How could anything have been more appropriate for a first new commission for the new Everyman?

Delving into the past often wakes up its ghosts and soon we’re aware of the secrets and lies that lie in the family’s history. Rage, reverie, resentment and reconciliation follow in the next couple of hours as the tales of the past are told. Sometimes the truth blurs with oft told stories and reality is hard to pin down.

Hugely effective are passages where children appear playing out the adult’s memories. There is a double cast of children in these roles who are alternating performances, and the team on stage for yesterday’s first night were superb.

Along the way, through Simon’s interviews for his thesis, we meet other local residents - a bar owner, an incomer from London a sex worker, and we also catch glimpses of residents from the past as we drift back and forth through the decades.

This play is both poignant and witty. It has a great sense of structure too – with a conclusion that feels as though we’ve reached a safe place to stop on the ongoing journey. There are no tidy endings but there is a resolution. Michael Wynne has succeeded in celebrating the locality, its past, its present and its people, without ever losing sight of what a play needs for longevity.

Lighting and sound design from Tim Lutkin and Fergus O’Hare, with music by Isobel Waller-Bridge, create the atmosphere on set and the slick scene transitions.

Director Rachel Kavanaugh has assembled a great cast, many of them familiar local faces. Neil Caple and Joe McGann play brothers Eric and Jack and Tricia Kelly their sister Veronica. Josie is played by Emma Lisi and her boyfriend Simon by Ciaran Kellgren. Michelle Butterly not only evokes the ghost of the mother but also performs six other characters including a music hall singer who opens the second act. Alan Stocks also has seven characters, from a 17th century farmer to the family’s late father. On Friday evening Freya Barnes, Rumah Norton, Harry Turpin and Sam Vaughan played the children’s roles, while on other nights they alternate with Julia Carlyle, Kaitlyn Hogg, Frank Turpin and George Turpin.

I have left one person till last because, while the entire cast are excellent, it is Eileen O’Brien’s tremendous performance as Maggie that really stands out for the huge range of emotion that she finds in her multifaceted character.

Hats off to the cast and creative team of Hope Place for scoring another bull’s-eye for the Everyman.

I saw the first preview performance yesterday and Hope Place plays Liverpool Everyman until Saturday 31st May – full details available at www.everymanplayhouse.com or click here

Author and Director were in the house gauging audience reaction and scribbling notes, so some scenes may be modified.

Artwork by Bolland & Lowe for production publicity and playtext