Transcript Rosie - Grandage (2013)

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
MICHAEL GRANDAGE COMPANY
THE LOVERS
Hermia (Susannah Fielding),
Helena (Katherine Kingsley)
Lysander (Sam Swainsbury)
and Demetrius (Stefano Braschi)
Oberon/ Theseus
Puck/
philostrate
Titania
Bottom
Setting
“Christopher Oram's set for the enchanted
wood, where most of the play takes place, is
magical. A large, full supermoon dominates
the backdrop whilst the forest is full of
grandiose decay with smashed crystal
chandeliers on the ground, and a damaged
cast iron ornate spiral staircase winding up
into the trees.”
“This West End staging is both "ancient
and new, erotic but innocent, un-pretty
but beautiful", says Libby Purves in The
Times.
Michael Billington
The Guardian,
“I've suppose I've seen more textually
exploratory Dreams, but Grandage's
production is sexy, swift and sure-footed, a
constant delight to the eye and never lets us
forget that this is a play about the magical
capacity for change.”
“Ever since the Polish critic, Jan Kott, wrote a famous
essay viewing Shakespeare's play as a nightmarish
fantasy, directors have been exploring the dark side
of The Dream. Michael Grandage's new production –
the fourth in his current West End season – takes the
opposite tack.”
“Built around the star-power of Sheridan
Smith and David Walliams, this is an enormously
spirited and fast-moving show that turns into a
joyous celebration of sex and fertility.”
“In a play all about transformation, one of the production's best
internal jokes is the shift that overcomes Walliams's Bottom. As one of
the rude mechanicals, he is a campy amateur thesp in a chestnutcoloured Frankie Howerd wig who gleefully paws the breasts of his
fellow actor, Francis Flute. Transformed into a buck-toothed, bigeared ass, Walliams turns into a figure of polymorphous sexuality who
delights equally in Titania's lascivious embraces and the well-filled
honeybag of a hairy fairy.”
CRITICS’ REVIEWS
“Writhing around with her band of spliff-smoking
playboy pixies, Smith excels as the mythical forest’s
lusty empress, devouring her bucktoothed bedfellow
Bottom.”
- Time Out, London
“Walliams’s early scenes are spun through with an
outlandish egomania combined with a suggestion
that he and actor-writer Peter Quince are an item.”
“The lovers’ messy, tear-stained fighting is packed with
humour; as Hermia and Helena are touching in their
confusion, providing genuinely warm moments where
Walliams’s crew and Puck and his fairies do not.”
- Londonist
“Enormously spirited show that turns
into a joyous celebration of sex and
fertility” says Michael Billington in The
Guardian
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail gave the
play a five star review calling it "a fine
dream".
"This production catches the Sybaritic
jollity, the vivid vim of the Dream. Even in
autumnal London you catch a taste of
midsummer," he said.