Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream: A Play for the Nation. Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford
It was a great night for Wyre Forest. Six members of the Kidderminster-based amateur-drama company, the Nonentities Society, stepped on to one of the most famous stages in the world and covered themselves with glory.
This production is something rare, a fusion of professional and amateur skills. Over the next five months the show will visit theatres around Britain. In each venue, members of local am-dram groups will join the RSC actors on stage, playing the "rude mechanicals," working-class folk staging a play within a play for the gentry of Athens, in Erica Whyman's stylish production.
On press night it was the Nonentities' turn and I defy anyone to tell where professional ended and amateur began. Chris Clarke, Sue Downing, Simon Hawkins, Patrick Bentley, Alex Powell and Andrew Bingham gave an assured and riotously funny performance, in thick Black Country accents, as six of the most earnest and hamfisted thespians Athens had ever seen. The audience loved it.
The show is designed for touring and so the set is sparse. The three worlds of aristocratic Athens, the enchanted forest and working-class back streets are mashed into one derelict building with a grand piano.
Lucy Ellinson is a hyperactively endearing Puck, Chu Omambala is a majestic Oberon and Laura Riseborough is outstanding as Helena. But this is one production when the professionals will have to take a back seat and get used to a string of local-media reviews praising the talent of unpaid am-dram volunteers who do it purely for love.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is at Stratford until July 16. Details of tour dates at https://www.rsc.org.uk
by Peter Rhodes
