A Midsummer Night's Dream

Staging A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a beautiful walled garden has the makings of a perfectly bijoux production of this fairy tale. Just right for Shoestring Theatre Company, a gem of a little company in Brandon, Suffolk, that punches above its weight in commitment, energy and creativity.

Previous productions have seen Shoestring change scenes by leading audiences to different sections of the garden. This year’s retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a stationary affair; the audience stayed in one place for the entire 40-minute epic. 

Directed by Leah Sanders and assistant director Natasha Morgan, Dream found many performers playing multiple roles, using costumes changes to change out characters. The foursome in the roles of the lovers – Helena (Mia McDonald), Hermia (Ashley Bell), Demetrius (Amelia Manser) and Lysander (Gracie Cash) stayed constant, however, throughout as they supplied much of the dramatic thread woven throughout. 

Also true to one character throughout was Andrew Gookey as Nick Bottom, described as “the cheeky weaver”, who is transformed into a donkey for Titania, Queen of the Fairies (assistant director Morgan), to fall in love with through the pranks of Puck (Alisha Gaught).  Gookey gave Bottom a wide-eyed, gangly goofiness that served the character well, providing lots of laughs. His vocal projection was also strong, giving the youthful performers in the cast a great example to follow.

Also in the cast were Archie Stohr, Joshua Townsend, Polly Pickard, Lara Pickard, and the very reliable Denise Maxim.  

As always with Shoestring, the costumes were visually lovely and appropriate. Special stand-outs were the butterfly costumes for Titania and Oberon, King of the Fairies (Adrian Wadey). 

The 40-minute adaptation of this Shakespeare comedy was well-crafted – the storyline was presented in short, sharp precision with all the good bits left in and the boring, meandering bits ejected!

What an enjoyable production this was. The one recurring suggestion to Shoestring is to have, if not a full programme, a list of the cast of characters and the technical/backstage crew available to your audiences to read and take away with them. People like to know who they’ve seen! 

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