Oct 27

Oct 27 Theatre Review: Pop-Up Globe’s “A Midsummer Night's Dream” is an Antipodean Vision

The latest interpretation of William Shakespeare’s great works has come to Perth, and it’s bringing its ancestral home along with it. If you’re like me, and have always wanted to see Shakespeare performed in its original setting, then the Pop-Up Globe is for you! The Pop-Up Globe began in 2015 as a theatre production company in Auckland, under Director Miles Gregory. After selling out shows all over New Zealand, the Pop-Up Globe is now touring Australia, performing their own unique brand of the Bard, within specially-built, life-size replicas of The Globe Theatre in London. I was lucky enough to attend one of their Perth performances on the 12th of October.

Standing proudly next to the entrance of Crown Perth, the world’s first full-scale duplicate of Shakespeare’s artistic home was a sight to behold. The bright red roofing sat atop parchment-white walls which, upon closer inspection, were covered in script lines from Shakespeare’s plays. Inside, I was transported to the heart of 17th century London, with only the open roof giving away the clear, sunny Perth sky. From my spot upstairs, (a space once reserved for noble spectators), I watched as the audience filled the circular seating, as well as the open pit at the foot of the stage, where peasants once stood and watched from. As I soaked up the immersive world I had entered, it became clear that this venue, which echoed the space that Shakespeare’s plays were written for, would be just as essential to the experience as the performance inside it.

From the beginning, this production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream set itself apart from other incarnations of the magical comedy. Before the play even began, a cast member welcomed the audience, informing us that the Pop-Up Globe was perhaps the only production that not only allowed, but actively encouraged the audience to take photos and videos of the play with our phones, and to share it on social media. While the traditional choice of making Hippolyta/Titania (Renaye Tamati) and Theseus/Oberon (Anatonio Te Maioha) dual roles was still observed, what truly distinguished this play from previous adaptations was the brilliantly executed reinterpretation of the fairy characters as gods or spirits of Maori folklore.

The first hint that this would be a multicultural, multilingual production came in the very first scene, when the Amazon Queen Hippolyta was brought on stage; bound, gagged, and struggling against her captors. Renaye Tamati portrayed Hippolyta, not as Duke Theseus’s willing bride-to-be, but as his conquered prisoner of war, captive and yet still defiantly screaming in a foreign tongue. This new, unexpected take seemed to suggest that Hippolyta’s story mirrored the traumatic experiences forced upon many women of colour during and after the spread of English colonialism, which occurred during the Elizabethan and Jacobean reigns of Shakespeare’s time.

As the Fairy King and Queen, Te Maioha, Tamati, and other forest-dwellers were dressed in Tikanga Maori tribal clothing, and spoke their Shakespearean lines almost exclusively in Te Reo Maori language. While the predominantly English-speaking audience couldn’t fully comprehend their words, the Pop-Up Globe’s production proved that language really is no barrier. Even if you weren’t familiar with the story, the body language of the cast spoke volumes and allowed you to sit back, relax, and simply enjoy the action. The comedic war between the sparring fairy royals unfolded in a visceral, violent, and magical display that had us all in stitches, right until the end, when Titania asked an audience member if she had really done THAT with the donkey-headed Nick Bottom, shaking her head in denial and disbelief as the laughing woman emphatically nodded to confirm the horror. Amidst all the laughter that comes with the territory of comedy, there was also a surprisingly serious and sobering moment, when Titania’s anger at Oberon’s trickery erupted into a piercing scream of rage that melted into sorrow, and then a tender reconciliation between the estranged husband and wife.

The much-loved fairy character Puck, whose mischievious actions caused most of the play’s hilarious developments, was portrayed by the strapping Eds Eramiha, who performed the role with a fierce and physical vitality that combined slapstick humour and saucy confidence. Clad in little more than a Maori grass skirt and a wide cheeky grin, Eramiha completely stole the show as he embodied the spirit of a naughty sprite who sneakily creeps, joyously bounds, and lightly leaps across the stage, leaving a trail of chaos in his wake.

The four Athenian lovers, played by Rebecca Rogers, Harry Bradley, Ruby Hansen, and Simon Rodda, spent most of the play as the fairies’ playthings, to our great amusement. In spite of their velvety Jacobean costumes, the mortals were both relatable and entertaining as their civilised conflict of affections devolved into a wild, dizzying dance of love potions and mismatched couplings. In addition to the physical comedy their fight provided, the lovers sprinkled small ad-libbed one-liners into their Shakespearean lines, which modernised their characters and added extra morsels of humour to the plot. I cackled as the prim and proper Hermia, dragging her massive modern-day suitcases behind her, told her unwelcome suitor to “piss off”. For the groundlings in the pit who were close to the stage, hilarious audience interactions were aplenty, with Demetrius at one point leaving the pitiful Helena to the mercy of an audience member, Hugh.

Finally, the company of lower-class Mechanicals, played by Peter Hambleton, Travis Graham, Johnny Light, Jonathan Martin, and Sheena Irving, were presented as modern-day tradies, dressed in the quintessential hi-vis vests and hardhats. I couldn’t help but smile conspiratorially at the name of the construction company on the back of their vests; Sweet Ass Mechanical Solutions. Shakespeare, the king of puns and naughty wordplay, would have been proud. Nick Bottom the Weaver (Hambleton), who is transformed by Puck and becomes the object of the spellbound Titania’s affections, was a diamond in the rough, combining a dreamer’s optimistic idealism with the coarse manner of an Aussie working-class man. He and his company of tradies were a charming band of blue-collar workers, rehearsing their amateur production of “Pyramus and Thisbe”, which would later be performed as a play within a play at the end of Midsummer. Their antics as they rehearsed, experienced Bottom’s transformation, and performed their DIY show to the Athenian nobles, received many belly laughs from the audience (Never has a pair of bright orange collapsible witches’ hats been put to better use). The groundlings in the pit were both delighted and horrified as their proximity to the action left them vulnerable to Bottom-as-Pyramus and Flute-as-Thisbe spraying them with fake blood in the final act.

All in all, the Pop-Up Globe’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a triumph of theatre, capturing the comedy of the classic tale, and breathing new life into the ancient script with its new interpretation of iconic characters. Australian audiences will love this new vision of Shakespeare, brought to us by our New Zealand neighbours, as well as the Pop-Up Globe’s three other Perth productions of Hamlet, Twelfth Night, and Measure For Measure. Would I go to the Pop-Up Globe again? Verily, forsooth!

5 out of 5 stars!

The Pop-Up Globe’s 4 productions play at Crown Perth until the 1st of December. For tickets and more information, click here.