Stage Door News
Stage Door News
No two productions of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream are ever alike, and Theatre Erindale’s promises to be even more unique than most. Director Sue Miner has set it in the Victorian era that followed the Industrial Revolution, with the stern plans of industrial tycoons turned upside down by rambunctious fairies – with hilarious results! The show previews at the Erindale Studio Theatre February 14 and closes March 3 (after a break for UofT’s Reading Week following Family Day).
Miner is a busy Toronto director whose credits include Shakespeare in the Rough and Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park. “I had the luxury of setting the play in any historical period of my choosing,” she says. “But where to start?” Eventually Mendelssohn’s brilliant score for the play – from which we get our popular Wedding March – as well as the entrancing nineteenth-century images of storybook fairies by Arthur Rackham and others, led her “to the industrial revolution, factory workers and the melodramatic theatre of the day, and what unfolded for me is what we present to you.”
In this production, an industrial magnate named Theseus is about to conclude a hostile takeover of the firm owned by Hippolyta, when a stern Victorian mother brings him a problem: her daughter is in love with the wrong man! Threatened with death or celibacy, the lovers flee to the woods, where – thanks to the mischievous goblin Puck – they become entangled in a war between the Fairy King Oberon and his Queen Titania. Meanwhile a group of factory workers have come to the woods to rehearse a play celebrating the coming merger; Puck cannot resist turning their lives upside down as well. Of course it all comes out happily in the end, with multiple marriages and a performance by the factory workers that you will never forget!
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the world’s most beloved comedy, and the most popular of all Shakespeare’s plays. In fact, it may be the most produced play of all time! Harold Bloom speaks for generations of critics when he calls it Shakespeare’s “first undoubted masterwork, without flaw.”
Theatre Erindale productions feature the performances of senior Acting students in the Sheridan-UTM Theatre and Drama Studies Program, with the design and direction of seasoned professionals. Evening and weekend parking at UTM is $6.50, but at only $10-$15, single tickets for Theatre Erindale are still the best entertainment bargain in Mississauga! A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs February 14 to 16 and 28 to March 3 in the Erindale Studio Theatre. For tickets and information, call 905-569-4369 or visit www.theatreerindale.com .
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
by William Shakespeare
Directed by Sue Miner
Magic, love, and lunacy in the world’s most beloved comedy!
Preview Feb 14; Opening Feb 15; runs Feb 16 and Feb 28-Mar 3, 2013
Thurs 7:30; Fri 8:00; Sat 2:00 & 8:00; Sun Mar 3 2:00
$10.00-$15.00
Erindale Studio Theatre, UTM
(3 lights north of Dundas off Mississauga Road)
www.theatreerindale.com or 905-569-4369
2013-02-07
Mississauga: Bigwigs and Brownies meet in Theatre Erinadle’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream”