Whimsy in the woods . . .

HAVING had a foursome of young men frolicking around in diaphanous garments shrieking like a bunch of hilarious harpies, Norman Maclean well remembers the last time he directed William Shakespeare’s famous comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Of course, they weren’t called fairies — one doesn’t do that to a bunch of Gisborne Boys’ High School bruisers. And just as well . . . today they are in positions — like police officers and teachers — that don’t really fit the faerie mould.
“We called them immortals,” Maclean hoots of the actors he directed nearly 20 years ago. “And they were absolutely wonderful.”
Maclean has managed to cast four women to play the “fairy” roles in a brand new pro-duction of Dream, which Unity Theatre is staging at Lawson Field Theatre this month.
But, he says, there will still be nothing fairy-like about them.
Instead, they are a quartet of circa-1920s Bright Young Things, flappers from the city looking for a weekend of country fun. And according to Maclean, Shakespeare’s surreal dreamland is just the place to find it.
“It really is such a magical, fizzy work with endless opportunities for making mischief,” he says. “There is just something about that 1920s period that makes it the ideal setting for this play. The war had ended and there was this overall sense of zaniness and ebullience that provides an ideal springboard for comedy.”
Maclean was also attracted to the design aesthetic of the day, supplementing Anne Milton-Tee’s costumery with two original flapper frocks — one a jet-beaded cocktail dress drawn from Unity’s wardrobe; the other a flaming orange ensemble from his own family archives.
However, he has resisted the temptation to go large on a built and painted set, as he usually does.
Apart from a specially-constructed art deco-style bed, the star of the setting is Stephen Jones’ intricately-devised lighting design, which takes characters from the drawing room to the depths of the forest.
It is a much safer bet than Unity’s last attempt at staging Dream, in 1980, when they commissioned Wellington director Michael Noonan to present the play in the leafy surrounds of Waiteata Park. It was March. Gisborne was on the cusp of autumn. And, naturally, it bucketed down with rain.
No worries about that this time and Unity says that, overall, the new show is kind of a “Downton-Abbey-goes-into-the-woods” where there are bounders and cads and love-sick lads, plus an eccentric aristocratic couple who indulge in a weekend of light-hearted frisking before finally tying the knot.
But Maclean believes that, even without the modern design and unconventional setting, Dream would always remain fresh for audiences.
“Some people do groan at the thought of Shakespeare and that is why we are absolutely committed to taking it out of the classroom,” says Maclean who, as an educator, has spent a fair bit of time in the classroom himself. “It is not meant to be read like some dry old text. It is meant to be performed so the full force of the humour — or tragedy — can be experienced.”
That said, he believed there were many people who expected him to present the play in a traditional way, “given that I am a person who does like tradition”.
“But with all of its running wild in the woods and its making of mischief, Dream, in particular, is one we can have a lot of fun with,” he said.
“This is a favourite play for me as I have always really enjoyed the fine blend of whimsy and confusion that fairly accurately mirrors the dizzy whirl that being in love may induce. And I think that Shakespeare used that key word, ‘dream’, very aptly. The whole sequence of events is a fantasy that might just as easily be unwinding in the head of a sleeping Duke as actually occurring at a mundane level.”
The director believes that much of the success of Unity’s latest outing is going to lie in the diversity of its cast, which features a wide range of actors including plenty of new, young players as well as the tried and true.
Unity’s updated version goes some-thing like this: After years of languidly living in sin, Duke Theseus and his long-term lover, Hippolyta, have decided to marry and to help celebrate they invite a bevy of Bright Young Things to their country estate for the weekend.
With them, the BYTs bring their own romantic complications, made even more complex by the presence of meddling young cad Puck who, with his boyhood chum Theseus, enjoys adding extra seasoning to an already over-spiced pot.
Then there is the bunch of local rustics with Thespian aspirations who, in a play within a play, choose the woods as a rehearsal venue for the heart-rending drama they plan to stage for the Duke and his consort.
Naturally, there is mayhem and mishaps, chaos and confusion but, as Norman Maclean says, “Amor vincit omnia” (“Love conquers all”). ■ A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be on at Lawson Field Theatre from November 15-17 (7.30pm), with a 4pm matinee on November 19. Book at Stephen’s PhotoPlus.