Blog: A Midsummer Night's Dream

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On New Year's Eve I went with The Lines In My Script to THE THEATRE, specifically to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at The Barbican. Executive Summary: it was AMAZING.

The amazingness was very much helped into being by the fact that The Barbican is a LOVELY theate, with VERY comfy seating which is roomy enough for you to put your legs out a bit, and also for people to GET BY without you needing to stand up. The show is pretty much sold out for the rest of the run as it has had RAVE REVIEWS, but we very handily managed to find two seats together near the middle in the sixth row which were FANTASTIC, although having been there before pretty much EVERYWHERE is a GRATE place to sit. The Barbican is, in this way at least, similar to The Bridge Theatre where we went to see Guys And Dolls last year and - unblogged but somehow also true - again a few weeks ago (as it was SO BRILLO) in that it has been designed to make going to The Theatre PLEASANT. Some of the older theatres in That London go out of their way to make it difficult with horrible cramped seats, loads of things in the way so you can't see, an average 0.3 toilets per 1,000 customers (0.1 for women) and terrible bars where you can't get served, but in the more "modern" (i.e. built in the last 50 years or so) places you get the impression that they'd like you to have a a) nice time b) drink c) wee at your leisure.

We were thus all set to have a nice time and BY GOLLY we did as the production was AMAAAZING. I have seen quite a lot of Shakespeare plays in my life, what with having done O Levels etc, but I have never ever LARFED quite as much as I did for this one. Usually when you go and see a Professional Production of The Shakespeare the "comedy" bits are APPALLING and unpleasant to sit through, but here they were ACTUALLY FUNNY. I mean, usually actors stick in extra bits of larking about (usually RUDE larking about) to get a laugh, but in this the ACTUAL SCRIPT had some jokes in it! I've never seen Midsummer Night's Dream before so maybe that is always the way with this one, but CRUMBS I wasn't expecting that.

Most of the publicity for the play has focused on Matthew Baynton From Out Of Ghosts playing Bottom, and to be honest you can see why because he was EXCELLENT and very very funny indeed, but the whole cast was great and especially the Rude Mechanicals. As I say, I've never seen or read this one before (i.e. I have never had to do so for an EXAM) so the whole AM DRAM bit came as a Rather Delightful SURPRISE to me, and it was ACE!

Having said that we did do SOME revision beforehand, so it all made SENSE (pretty much), which again is not always the case. Also the aforesaid Sound From My Speakers listened to the Creative Audio Description where members of the cast described what was going on for you with added jokes, which I am reliably informed was DEAD GOOD. I had some headphones too, but I couldn't get mine to work properly!

The set was AMAAAZING (I am using the word "AMAAAZING" a lot I know but that is because it WAS) with everything looking exciting ALL of the time and some astonishing EFFECTS. The one thing I wasn't quite sure of was the way that the EXTRA FAIRIES were done with ... er... well, FAIRY LIGHTS I guess you would call them, with the associated actors speaking their lines over the PA. It made it slightly confusing at times, for me at least, but did look Very Clever Indeed.

OH, and also also there was a LIVE BAND playing all the music, which was ALSO also also AMAAAAZING. There were positioned on TWO (2) balconies, one on each side of the stage, which worried me a bit but appeared to work all right. The last time I'd seen something like that was about 1,000,000 years ago when I went to see Belle & Sebastian in Manchester and they were split across two stages on either side of the room, which did not work AT ALL, but I guess TECHNOLOGY has come quite a long way since then!

At the end of it all I genuinely felt myself WELLING UP a bit, as it had been SO INCREDIBLE. It was, I think, one of the BEST EVER plays what I have ever seen at The Theatre, and was a pretty wonderful thing to do at the end of the year, especially going on a MATINEE as we did, so we had plenty of time to get home for New Year's Actual. It was a GRATE, and, in case I haven't mentioned it before, AMAAAAAAZING, experience, and one I would HIGHLY recommend!

posted 6/1/2025 by MJ Hibbett

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