Theatre

The West End is largely the home of big-budget, popular entertainment playing in venerable buildings that were specifically built for that purpose. This month, however, sees a small revolution, as Kneehigh’s version of ‘Brief Encounter’ opens in an old cinema in the Haymarket, and Theatre Delicatessen takes up temporary residence in 295 Regent Street. The latter could hardly be further from the plush red seats and gold trimmings of many Edwardian theatres. Rather, it’s an old music showroom which the property company Property Merchant Group has generously offered rent-free prior to redevelopment. It’s the ground floor of a 1920s block, next to the University of Westminster, which is otherwise occupied by conventional offices.
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The room is in just the kind of state that invariably appeals to theatre-makers. There’s no carpet, the walls are peeling, there are wires intertwined with police tape trailing down from the ceiling, and the windows that run across the back of the room are distinctly grimy. There’s also a pile of yellow builders’ coats sitting in the centre of a rectangle surrounded by chairs. It has to be said that I’m not thinking ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ as I look around. But that’s the play that Theatre Delicatessen is planning to present here for a five-week run. The company, consisting of three young directors – Jessica Brewster, Frances Loy and Roland Smith – and a producer, Mauricio Preciado Awad, was only formed last September and their plan is to take it in turns to direct, rather than floundering solo on the fringe. Consequently, Loy is directing ‘The Dream’, while Smith is developing his carpentry skills in response to the actors’ demands for boxes etc as they experiment with the set. ‘It’s the way that Roland and I have always wanted to work,’ says Loy, ‘rather than setting limitations on the actors right from the beginning.’

The production could not really be described as site-specific, but Loy’s been lucky in that the space fits so well with her ideas for the play, which are less about fairies frolicking in the park and more about a world turned upside down. ‘When Shakespeare was writing,’ she says, ‘fairies were pretty evil. They swapped children in their beds for horrible changelings. When Titania first enters, she talks about “contagious fogs” and “rheumatic diseases”. The seas are overwhelming the continents. So without clobbering people over the head, we want to suggest that this is actually a very relevant play about climate change.’ That idea will be enhanced by the suggestion that the flower that Puck circles the world for is so rare that it will arrive in a box as if it’s the last of its kind.

Fringe theatre economies mean that there are only 12 in the cast, so the actors playing the fairies also play the mechanicals, while the lovers stay as they are throughout. ‘It makes the lovers look as if they really don’t know where they are going,’ says Loy, ‘because at least when the mechanicals become fairies they own the space. We’re not hiding the fact that they are doubling up but embracing it.’ The mechanicals will wear the builders’ jackets – a great way of covering up their fairies’ costumes underneath – creating the delightful prospect of a builder’s Bottom.

The play is being cut in order for it come in at about two hours without an interval. ‘It’s been a big priority for us,’ says Smith, ‘to keep people in this space, a sort of alternative, dystopian world, where it’s hard to imagine that Oxford Circus is only a hundred yards away.’ For Smith, the audience’s experience of the space is an important part of the evening and it’s something that has already appealed to several education establishments who are snapping up tickets. ‘We want the audience to go on a journey,' says Smith. 'Some of them will have come from the office and will walk into another office as if they are going to a meeting. We’ve consciously painted the box office so it looks smart. That’s like our airlock. Then they’ll come down the corridor and into the bar where the performance space will be closed off by a curtain of industrial plastic.’ Tea and coffee in styrofoam cups will be served in the bar where the initial Athenian scenes will be performed.

Instead of the profit-share which is customary on the fringe – normally the actors end up with a percentage of nothing – the company has offered to share all the takings on a Tuesday night, regardless of whether the show is in profit or not. Given the actors’ enthusiasm for the scheme, it could well be the night to go.

Theatre Delicatessen perform ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ at 295 Regent Street until Mar 2.