Hit Irish version of MSND -- set in a nursing home

A Midsummer Night’s Dream review – Bard's comedy moves into a nursing home

4 / 5 stars 
 

Abbey, Dublin

Theseus is a doctor and Puck’s potion is administered by drip in an inventive production that strikes a fine balance between comedy and pathos 

 

 

Possibilities of transformation … Andrew Bennett as Bottom and Des Nealon (Tom Snout) in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Abbey theatre, Dublin. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Helen Meany

Tuesday 24 February 2015 06.56 EST Last modified on Tuesday 24 February 2015 07.01 EST

The residents of a nursing home may be physically restricted in Gavin Quinn’s inventive production, but their imaginations run free. The cheerily bright care-home setting is an inspired choice for a work that plays with ideas of escapism and the possibilities of transformation. From the opening scene, where doctors, carers and residents dance a conga among the zimmer frames and wheelchairs, the balance between comedy and pathos is finely judged.

With Theseus (Declan Conlon) as the all-powerful doctor in charge of their fate, the possibility of abuse of the elderly residents is hinted at. When Egeus threatens his delicate mother Hermia with death if she doesn’t marry a fellow resident, Demetrius, he is supported by Theseus initially. Here Egeus is in the role of bullying son rather than father, and Hermia’s vulnerability is palpable. Later, when Bottom is reunited with the Rude Mechanicals after his forest escapade, their joy seems mixed with relief that he is still alive. At their age, nothing can be taken for granted.

From a superb ensemble cast of 18 actors, some performances stand out: Gina Moxley’s baffled Helena, fending off the attentions of Lysander, played with irrepressible skittishness by John Kavanagh. Dan Reardon cuts a very cool figure as Puck, David Pearse is deadpan as Peter Quince, and Andrew Bennett’s sunny-tempered Bottom makes the often-tedious play-within-the-play genuinely funny.

 

Gina Moxley (Helena) and Barry McGovern (Demetrius) in Abbey Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photograph: Ros Kavanagh

Apart from small adjustments, Quinn takes a faithful approach to the text, adding some dance sequences and sonnets. Rather than deconstructing the play, as he has successfully done for his own Pan Pan theatre company, he incorporates inventive and telling details.

The magic potion dispensed to the lovers by Puck is medication administered by a drip, or with oxygen masks. While Aedín Cosgrove’s striking lighting design – manipulated with x-ray machines by Oberon and Puck – creates abstract moonlit images, the characters never leave the institution, but carry their pillows and duvets around with them. As the effects of the potion wears off, the lovers awake to the sound of canned sitcom laughter and reach for the walking sticks that had mysteriously vanished in their forest frolics. Whatever desires or “most rare vision” they have had will have to wait until the next night’s dream.