I attended the Red Kettle Theatre Company production of A Midsummer Nights' Dream in the Big Top last night. What a great night! What a different, magical, colourful experience. At only €10 a head it was a steal. And, thanks to the good people of Waterford, it was packed out.The set (bad photo above, sorry - taken on my phone afterwards) was spectacular and extremely well used: climbed on by Puck and Oberon, slept on by Titania (the wonderful Jenni Ledwell), danced on, fought on, loved on - even hosting a brawl in a pool!
Red Kettle really seem to come into their own with Shakespeare! Last year with Romeo and Juliet (unbelievably good) and now this offering. I really think that they are not getting the national acclaim which they so richly deserve.
I know that I could be seen as biased towards the company but it is so long since any involvement I try to look at their work with an objective eye. And I have to say, that if what we saw in Waterford last night, had been showing in Dublin, or Cork, or Galway, the national media would have been all over it like a swine-flu bug!
Keep up the good work Red Kettle. You are a credit to Waterford.
I can't finish without mentioning the 'locals' especially the younger ones: Puck played by Freddie Quinlan, Hermia played by Holly Browne, Lysander played by Alex Browne. Anne Riordan as Helena and all the many more. I see blossoming careers in time and real honest to God talent. Not of course forgetting the maestro Ben Hennessy who has a gift here!
At the very least I wish them as much pleasure and enjoyment as I got from my involvement with Red Kettle and other productions when I was their age. Oh and Bottom - Seamus Power - and all the 'players' were also superb. What a great night out!
Review as it appears in this mornings' Irish Times
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
People’s Park, Waterford
Ben Hennessy’s spirited and inventive production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is an adventurous, fun-filled, family-friendly venture which remains utterly faithful to Shakespeare’s play. Despite being better subtitled Play in the Car Park, Hennessey creates a forest within Fosset’s Big Top circus tent with a landscape of layered plants which are laddered up towards the canvas ceiling to conceal entrances and exits in a magical way. Joe Harney’s original composition conspires with Chris Tyler’s sound design to enhance the supernatural atmosphere, and the purple and yellow hues of Conor Nolan’s lights also create an otherworldliness within the natural environment of the dressed tent.
A community collaboration, the play is performed by a mix of professional and amateur actors, but the less experienced cast members certainly step up to the mark, enlivening the subplot of the star-crossed lovers. Holly Browne and Anne O’Riordan, in particular, display a sophisticated understanding and enunciation of the verse. Meanwhile, a group of young performers from the area create a flurry of sparkling fairies, dancing across the earthen floor.
However, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is always stolen by the rude mechanicals, and with Seamus Nolan as the asinine Bottom/Pyramus, Ben Quinlan as Flute/Thisbe and Jamie Murphy as Starveling/The Wall, the best bits of Red Kettle’s production fall within the play-within-the-play device. At €10 a ticket, the Big Top was bursting with families, who remained engaged and animated until the closing moments, when “fairy time” descended on the night outside and the children were carried out home to their beds. This democratic pricing is to be applauded as much as the democratic production structure, which ensured that this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream involved and engaged with as large a Waterford audience as possible.
SARA KEATING
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