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This review is from August 2022. ‘Midsummer Mechanicals’ returns for 2023.
The Globe’s first ever bona fide kids’ show is basically a riff on Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Set one year later, it follows following light relief yokels the ‘rude mechanicals’ as they reconvene on the anniversary of the sole performance of their disastrous play ‘The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thysbe’ to mount a follow-up.
The first half of Lucy Cuthbertson and Kerry Frampton’s production - written by Frampton and Ben Hales – consists of our four bumbling heroes Nick Bottom (Kerry Frampton), Peter Quince (Jamal Franklin), Francis Flute (Sam Glen) and Patience Snout (Melody Brown) trying to get the old band back together, only to discover that’s not going to happen. Formerly charged with playing all the female roles, Flute now has a beard and a broken voice; their old mucker Tom Snout has been jailed so has instead sent along his wife Patience (who as a woman isn’t legally allowed to act); Quince is a brittle, nervous mess; and Frampton’s serenely self-believing Bottom has blithely alienated the rest of the old crew but believes it’ll turn out just fine with just the four of them.
Chaos ensues, and then even more chaos ensues in the second half when they actually stage their new play, which is essentially a shambolic retelling of the events of Shakespeare’s play.
There’s lots of funny stuff here, most notably the actors themselves, who have an easy, amusing repartee with the audience, and handle various shouted interventions from children with consummate ease. There are some fun setpieces, notably a snowstorm created by one corner of the audience lobbing plastic balls at the cast, and a battle scene in which the actors crowdsource the insults they’re going to throw at each other.
It’s best when it’s at its most spontaneous. But the script is a chore. It’s essentially a soft remake of the mechanicals bits of the ‘Dream’, which is a nice enough idea, but at over two hours it’s far longer than their appearance in the source material. To truly get what’s going on, it really helps to be familiar with Shakespeare’s play, which most primary school kids won’t be. It’s just far too long generally for a piece of theatre aimed at ages five to 12, and lacks concision and direction. In fact, it often feels like a simultaneous attempt to make a play for kids and a play for adults: stuff like a sight gag involving the multiple meanings of the word ‘ass’ is amusing to grown-ups but almost aggressively incomprehensible to little ones. A bit about Bottom’s trauma at thinking the events of Shakespeare’s play were indeed… a midsummer night’s dream feels like it could form the basis of a more adult play, but is here just another ingredient tossed into an overegged pudding.
‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ at least had a so-bad-it’s-good quality. ‘Midsummer Mechanicals’ is full of nice ideas, but all it adds up to is a big buzzing headache of a show.