A Cabbagetown Fringe Theatre Production
originally published in Eye Magazine - July 13, 2000 - CT - (Four stars) * * * *

Accelerated Shakespeare

Fun, fresh and frenzied, A Midsummer Night's Dream Project has everything you could hope for in a Fringe Shakespeare: cigarettes, noisemakers, women playing men's roles and four pairs of clumpy ski boots.

Director Robert Ross Parker's adaptation is excellent, managing to squeeze all five acts into 60 minutes using only seven actors. Though the cuts to the text obviously had to be brutal, they have been made judiciously -- the only part of the play that feels like it's been cut beyond recognition is Titania and Bottom's comic coupling.

Acting from the whole ensemble is generally strong, and the doubling-up allows most of them to stretch themselves in wildly different roles. Some of the actors, lacklustre in their roles as lovers, finally come alive when they switch parts.

One of the director's innovations is to turn Shakespeare's "rude mechanicals" (Bottom, Quince, etc.) into clowns who communicate using only monosyllables (such as "Ma!" or "Hey!") and squeaky toys. At the end of the show, instead of performing Pyramus and Thisbe for the newlywed nobles, they do a two-minute version of A Midsummer Night's Dream -- again uttering only monosyllables -- an idea inspiring in both concept and execution. If grunts and kazoos sound unbearably pretentious, don't be put off: the clowning is so good that it's all perfectly comprehensible and entertaining.

Not quite every idea works (I was never fully convinced by the ski boots), but the play goes at such a clip that the bits that don't are quickly lost in the mad, delightful rush." -- CT