Brunton Theatre,
Musselburgh
3 stars
When Puck comes onstage
in a woolly hat, shorts, Wellington boots and a football scarf,
looking somewhere between a 1970s trainspotter and the ghost of Tom
Weir, it sets the tone for the Sell A Door company's bright, youthful
take on Shakespeare's most ubiquitous rom-com. When he picks up the
transistor radio that sits at the front of the stage, tuning the dial
to assorted weather-based bulletins, he's also tuning in on a world
where the sun always shines.
With a cast of just
nine doubling up parts with abandon, Bryn Holding's touring
production shows off that world via a network of mobile doors that
moves the action from Theseus and Hippolyta's formal courtship to the
reckless romp of the young lovers once they get lost in the woods. If
the gravitas isn't always present in the portrayals of the older
generation's tweedy demeanour, things are far more assured once the
Mechanicals stumble into view. These scenes are milked for all
they're worth
There's fun to be had
with door-bells, and when Tommy Aslett's ass-headed Bottom bumps into
Katy Sobey's Snug sporting a lion mask, the double take could go on
forever. At the play's heart, however, is David Eaton's Puck, who
here becomes both narrator and chorus as he manipulates the lovers'
destinies into being. There's a sense that even his bungling was done
deliberately to see what mischief might happen.
As with the play's
opening, the epilogue is broadcast via Puck's transistor radio. If
the mood change hints at darker things to come, the radio silence
that follows gives things a weight previously only hinted at.
The Herald, February 25th 2013
ends
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