THE POCKET DREAM. To 17 July.
York
THE POCKET DREAM
by Elly Brewer and Sandi Toksvig
Theatre Royal To 17 July 2004
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 10 July 2.30pm
Audio-described 110 July 2.30pm, 15 July
BSL Signed/Talback 15 July
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 01904 623568
www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 3 July
Shakespeare with airborne stage-manager: good fun and an effective tribute to its original.You're doing the Dream in regional rep and most of your cast don't turn up. What do you do? Nothing, let's hope, like Elly Brewer and Sandi Toksvig imagine. From a manager's, and stage-manager's, viewpoint their fantasy is a Midsummer Nightmare. But a fine frolic for the audience. No wonder Pocket Dream's become a popular piece following its Nottingham premiere, and has now been customised by Brewer for York.
The emergency cast' includes backstage and front-of-house staff, plus a local PE teacher who's learned his lines in bed with rep prima donna Phyllida. Paul Clayton and his company do a sterling job, making clear how relationships within the company, exposed on stage as they try to steer their way through the action, mirror tensions between the Dream characters.
Like all exploitations of the idea of performance going wrong, the impact varies depending on each audience member's experience of such humour. What's predictable to old hands at such shows is hilarious at first, or second, exposure. If there's a niggle, it's that some points might have been wrung for a few more laughs. But there's plenty to keep the audience happy.
Among the strengths of choosing the Dream for this treatment is that it mirrors the original script's amateur presentation of Pyramus and Thisbe'. As the whole evening's already worked on that level, P and T becomes an audience participation riot (with inbuilt rehearsal), including a Mexican lion's roar that allows for health and safety while placing great expectations on any young woman seated to the stage's extreme left.
Like its original, Pocket Dream plays with the paradox of theatre, where pretence creates imaginative magic. One of its strengths lies in moments when poetic magic breathe through the comic mayhem. Clayton creates such magic at the opening, craftily subverting it when the beginning recurs for the Pocket version, but might allow it to breathe more later including the end where Puck's final speech brings levels of reality together. Here, it loses a key line (and rhyme) most unkindest cut of all in a piece that elsewhere rarely misses a trick.
Jo: Lucy Benjamin
Simon: Ben Porter
Phyllida: Susan Kyd
Dave: Ronnie McCann
Felix: Owen Brenman
Tom: Travis Oliver
Fairies: Fiona Baistow, Suki Chapman, Alistair Chatters, David Orme, Lottie Noddings, Tom Wright/Marissa Anderson, Helen Bennett, Rebecca Harrison, Toby Jackson, Nick Sanderson, Ben Thomas
Director: Paul Clayton
Designer: Angela Simpson
Lighting: Mike Robertson
Composer: Christopher Madin
Flying: Foy
2004-07-04 11:57:53