The Lord Chamberlain’s Men, will present William Shakespeare’s most popular and hilarious comedy, the magical feast A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
From May to September, the all-male company will be touring the UK’s most beautiful and historic houses, castles and parks with their traditional open-air production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, encouraging audience members to bring along picnics, deckchairs and a glass of something chilled to enjoy with their evening of Shakespearean fun.
Last year’s production of The Tempest, Shakespeare’s final and most enigmatic play, delighted audiences all over the UK and Europe and this year’s troupe of classically trained actors will bring to life a play which is traditionally a much more crowd-pleasing comedy, complete with magical fairies, love potions and bombastic players!
Mark Puddle, the company’s founder and creative director, says he’s sure that the Dream will prove more than popular with audiences. ‘The Tempest is a far more thoughtful play, so for this year we decided to go all out and do a raucous, no holds-barred comedy, so A Midsummer Night’s Dream was the natural choice, as it delivers in spades everything we and our audiences want to make a fantastic summer evening.’
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play that has delighted audiences for almost 400 years and is regarded by many to be Shakespeare’s funniest and most popular play. Acting as an antithesis to the tragedy of Romeo and Juliet, this tale of young love, magic and amateur dramatics guarantees a rollercoaster journey with a happy and theatrical ending.
The Lord Chamberlain’s Men will continue its popularity by bringing the show to the shores of Dearnford Lake, offering its audience the perfect opportunity to see Shakespeare’s plays performed to the very highest standards, in the way the Bard first envisioned them…with an all-male cast!
A brief plot synopsis…
The play revolves around the adventures of four young lovers, a group of amateur actors and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest. The romantic intrigues of Hermia & Lysander and Helena & Demetrius are confused and complicated still further by entering this magical forest where Oberon, the King of the Fairies and his Queen, Titania, preside. Puck, a mischievous sprite and Oberon’s servant, encounters both the lovers and the amateur dramatists (who are rehearsing their hilarious version of the play Pyramus and Thisbe) and his love potion spirals their already complicated situation out of control with hilarious consequences…
Tickets
Tickets are 12.50 for adults and £7.50 for children bought in advance, or £15.00 and £10.00 on the night.
For further information or to buy tickets please visit Dearnford Lake Café, Tilstock Road, Whitchurch, Shropshire, SY13 3JJ, phone 01948 665914 visit www.dearnford.com or www.tlcm.co.uk.
