Shakespeare Gets Festive

The Belvoir Street Downstairs Theatre is kicking off the festive season with a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Director Eamon Flack has turned this great Shakespearean classic into a grand, decadent and sad celebration – a party unfolding on stage, shot through with karaoke ballads and comedy.

With a cast of eight (and a half), new doublings and re-ordered scenes, this is A Midsummer Night’s Dream as it’s never been done before. It is an exploration of a hedonistic pursuit of love, pleasure and freedom – that comes at a cost.

Eamon said: “This play is a vivid reminder of what it’s like to fall in love for the first time – the hope, pain, thrill, extreme amazement, profound confusion, awful misunderstanding and brilliant aliveness – that’s why we’ve been putting on this play for 400 years and still haven’t got enough of it.”

Eamon Flack has worked as an actor, director, writer and dramaturg for Company B Belvoir, STC, Bell Shakespeare’s Mind’s Eye, thinice, Perth International Arts Festival, Griffin Stablemates, PlayWriting Australia, the Ensemble Theatre, ArtRage, deckchair, the Old Fitz and Darlinghurst Theatre. He founded Bob Presents, a loose collective of theatre-makers. In 2009 he adapted and directed Gorky’s Summerfolk for Bob Presents and his adaptation of Sophocles’ Antigone was directed by Matthew Lutton for ThinIce and the Perth International Arts Festival. He is the Artistic Associate of Company B Belvoir and will be directing Samuel Beckett’s The End in the 2010 season.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream previews at the Belvoir Street Downstairs Theatre on November 26 ahead of a November 27 opening night. Details: (02) 9699 3444.