This summer's project by Stirling District Youth Theatre was a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. After 3 weeks of intense work by the young cast and their helpers, the production went public for two nights at the Cowane Centre on 26th and 27th July.
I was surprised to find no review of the production in the Stirling Observer, which might have found some space in among the regurgitated commercial press releases. So this brief notice is a partial redress of that social amnesia...
What I'd heard beforehand filled me with little confidence about the production. Setting the production in the 1920s? Playing the transformed Bottom as a Charlie Chaplin figure? Surely the ass's head is integral to text and production? And video inserts? Each decision seemed misjudged.
My scepticism remained with me as I waited for the start of the production, looking at the set design - very much inspired by the film tins and sheen of the Jazz Age. I expected an evening of laboured line delivery - after all, magic had been sorely lacking in my two most recent experiences of Shakespeare's play: a turgid star-name movie and a trampolining open-air production.
And yet... From the moment the play got under-way my preconceptions were dispelled. The young actors spoke with verve, balance and understanding. And the staging flowed too - the action balanced across the stage space, with action continuing "off the ball". The video inserts which I had feared so much instead complemented the text: at times it built the fairyland magic, and then later, during Titania and Bottom/Chaplin's reverie, it pulled together that traditional fairyland with Hollywood tinseltown.
All in all, this was a fine, imaginative production.