Midsummer is an adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Titlyard tell us the story of how a crew of office workers putting on a play end up trapped in crazed love triangles and under magic spells, all at the hands of the fairy jester Puck.
As someone who isn’t a fan of amateur Shakespeare productions, I was apprehensive, to say the least. The venue was quite small and the stage had a bin, some scattered pieces of twigs and a blue tarpaulin on the back. It wasn’t very promising.
However, the set is a discredit to the performance. The actors enter the stage, playing office workers who are putting a performance. This is when Puck puts a spell on them, and they act out A Midsummer Night’s Dream but they believe they’re really in the forest. I thought this was a great concept as it takes the micky out of actors performing Shakespeare, and then we get to see some great Shakesperian acting! A moment that stood out for me was Kelly Letourneau’s portrayal of counting out the beats when performing Shakespeare. It was so clever and absolutely hilarious! She perfectly imitated that disjointed rhythm we all try to follow when first learning Shakespeare. Director Sara Holdren did a great job at adding little gems like this throughout the performance.
Tiltyard’s cast are all individually brilliant. Each of them performed the text perfectly. Of course, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a great comedy, but Tiltyard sprinkled some modern humour that had the audience chuckling throughout. A favourite of mine was Brennan Caldwelll who played Demetrius. His comedic timing was impeccable! His connection with the other actors was fantastic and their back and forth during the manic love triangle scenes was hilarious.
Director Sara Holdren has done a brilliant job with this fantastic cast. They all embodied the characters they were playing, and Holdren elevated them to the next level. The only thing I found to be distracting was the blocking. Numerous times, actors would be running lots of different ways to get off the stage, sometimes this felt a bit manic and a bit distracting. For example, Puck would scurry off a few times, but because they were running far it was distracting from the action on stage. This could be due to the venue and it wasn’t too big of an issue but it could do with some tightening up. Overall, the performance was great remix of a Shakespeare classic!
Tiltyard’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream remixes the great Shakespeare story we all know. It has all the magic of the original but with a modern twist. Tiltyard has done a fantastic job with Midsummer, but there is room for some tightening on the blocking and set.
Midsummer is being performed at The Space @ Niddry Street, 22-27th of August
Theatre Scotland 
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