PERCHANCE TO DREAM... To 31 May.

Salisbury

PERCHANCE TO DREAM…
inspired by the works of William Shakespeare

Footsbarn Travelling Theatre at Hudson's Field To 31 May 2003
7pm
Runs 3hr 15min One interval

TICKETS: 01722 320333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 29 May

Renowned troupe for once surprisingly unsure-footed.They started in Cornwall, but for most of their 32 years Footsbarn have pitched their theatre-tent around the world, developing as an international company. (French sits alongside English at times, invigoratingly, in this production). Visits to Britain are rare and it's a coup for Salisbury Festival to have enticed them, even if they've had to move from the originally planned Cathedral Close setting to Hudson's Field, some way up the road to Amesbury.

And even if this curious show, drawing on several Shakespeare plays – some 12 hours' drama - doesn't have the haunting compulsion or rich theatrical texture shown in previous work. The reduction's both too great and too small. There's enough of several stories to attach narrative hooks, so the piece can't work as a kind of imagery-based deconstruction. But hefty elisions and omissions thin out each story strand.

It starts well, with a fast-paced meeting of Romeo and Juliet. The audience sits, or stands, around. All is pace; Juliet shins up a tall maypole for her balcony - the height, as Romeo calls across the stage from a lower platform, establishes the young woman's exaltation.

Then curtains fall away to reveal audience seating. We sit, and the dramatic temperature drops. There are fine moments, many involving the curtain serving much of the time as a rear wall. Young Hamlet's anger is forcefully expressed by the graffitti and blood-spatters he throws on this curtain.

Later, as Claudius kneels in attempted prayer, Hamlet stands amid the audience, casting a huge shadow over his uncle, seeming to stroke his head mockingly and kick him over. But there's only so many times ingenious shadows can astonish in one evening.

There are fine transitions; the Hamlet acting troupe metamorphose into the Dream Mechanicals (strangely deserting 'Pyramus and Thisbe' for King Lear). A furious fairy war over the Dream's Changeling Boy converts to Macbeth's Weird Sisters. And Footsbarn magic's in the music, or the final image where a royal figure with massive train sweeps away the dead bodies of the plays' conclusions – a balance to the opening birth image.

Life may be a dream. But the necessary alchemical fusion of the parts is rare here. We're left with stripped-down narratives that make sense in terms of examining imagination so generally, they merely refer us back to the plays, reminding that, for all the inspired moments along the way, much of the time we are merely seeing – and listening to – Shakespearean bits indifferently done

Cast:
Julie Biereye-Meziat, Christophe Bihel, Agnieszka Kolosowska Bihel
Joe Cunningham, Paddy Hayter, Shaji Karyat, Francois Lecoq, Anne de Broca, Guillaume Meziat, S. Streeletha

Collective direction
Lighting: Jean-Claude Mironnet
16mm film: Sophie Lascelles
Costume: Charmian Goodall
Masks, Scenography: Fredericka Hayter, Danny Hayter, Jef Perlicius

2003-05-30 02:34:20