Theatre Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Mermaids Production
St.Age, St Andrews
4/11/24-5/11/24
Directed by Heather Tiernan
Produced by Aradhana Kiran
Written by William Shakespeare
Reviewed by Iain Lynn
Bickering lovers, substance abuse, terrible student theatre – there should be no surprise that A Midsummer Night’s Dream worked so well. Director Heather Tiernan’s show was, without a doubt, an absolute crowd-pleaser—I have seen far too many Dreams that forget it is a comedy.
As I was ushered to my seat, the stage was bare apart from Puck (Iha Jha), head turned to the ground, crouched. From the start, the show intertwined the central groups of lovers, actors, and fairies (and for this play at least, they’re separate categories)—with Puck ‘conducting’ the opening scene between Theseus (Buster van der Geest) and Hippolyta (Eilidh Reed). Although there was interaction between these groups, it really was a play of three parts, each with its own chemistry, momentum, and world.
Firstly, we had the world of the lovers – Hermia (Poppy Kimitris), Demetrius (George Jeffreys), Helena (Mary Kalinski), and Lysander (Felix Da Silva Clamp). They were best when chaotic and fighting—over each other, mostly over themselves. Special mention has to go to Kimitris’ Hermia, who shone through the romantic violence. What made the lovers work well is their commitment, and their ability to flip this commitment in a heartbeat—this was exemplified by Jeffreys and Da Silva Clamp, who ratcheted from pursuing Hermia in love, then Helena in love, then each other in hate, each time never dropping their energy or wild commitment.
Secondly, we had the actors, or ‘rude mechanicals’, who were transformed into rude students for the show. This change was a stroke of genius—it allowed the humour of the play itself to come out, and suddenly Shakespeare wasn’t writing 500 years ago, instead, he was describing an all too typical St Andrews student production, with egos soaring and talents plummeting. Each of the ensemble played off each other, building up scenes of fast comedic energy, from the ever-suffering Snout (Sophie Rose Jenkins), Starveling (Eleanor White), and Flute (Alex Gorichev), to the frantic Quince (Louise Windsor). Special mention must be made to making the timid Snug (Fiona McShane) a techie—pulled straight from the lighting booth behind the audience. Suddenly her fear makes perfect sense—she’s not an actor, she was meant for the tech board.
Of course, the leader of this cast-within-a-cast is Bottom, marvellously played by Kiera Joyce. She toed the line between overbearing, ignorant, and self-assured perfectly, as easily claiming the Fairy Queen’s bed as every role in the troupe’s play-within-a-play. The student troupe playing a student troupe had to, of course, actually perform the Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe—a production that brought the house down. From the acting (who knew they could all act just so poorly) and the costumes (especially Pyramus’ sword which was about the size of a door with “KNIFE” scrawled on its side), it was a brilliantly, magnetically, terrible Pyramus and Thisbe.
Finally, there are the fairies: the strange court of dreams ruled by Titania (Caroline Kerr) and Oberon (Orsolya Haynes), aided by his servant Puck. In a play about momentum and space, the fairies occupied a world of their own, languid and dreamlike, which worked nicely towards the close of the show as a foil to the chaos of the lovers, though at times it did slow the momentum that had been built in other parts of the show.
The Dream was finished with another brilliant choice from Tiernan, a ceilidh in miniature. Traditionally, a Shakespeare play would’ve ended with a jig—a dance for the actors to ‘throw off’ their parts and celebrate the show they’ve performed. This jig in the form of a set of Scottish country dances epitomised exactly why the play worked so well for its audience. It was a celebration of the best of St Andrews, romantic frustration, being visited by fairies in the night, and swinging one another around 601.
