Review: A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Eastville Park Swimming Pool – ‘Casting a spell over audiences’

What better way to kick off a summer in Bristol than with a vibrant reimagining of Shakespeare’s magical comedy of young love and rivalry in Eastville Park.

Over the past few years, theatre company Insane Root have produced adaptations of classics in unusual spaces dotted across the city – from the Suspension Bridge’s vaults to Arnos Vale Cemetery.

This summer, director Hannah Drake’s staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream took us into an enchanting, overgrown swimming pool – casting a spell over its audience.

The empty Victorian swimming bath, with leafy shrubbery overflowing from its cracks and graffiti lining its walls, was a fitting backdrop to witness the collision of a Shakespearean classic with a fresh, energised twist.

The amphitheatre’s cobbles and crevices formed an ideal canvas for action to unfold and dappled lighting a fitting state to illuminate its darker themes

In this production, the entire cast of nine was engaging – between them playing 28 parts. Standouts included Euan Shanahan’s impish, khaki-clad Puck – part artful dodger, part drunk festival goer armed with sunglasses, stained t-shirt and tinny. A gender switch saw Esmee Cook play an especially tender Lysander to her Hermia.

Also excellent was Byron Mondahl as Bottom – played as a self-important and camped-up – who captured the heart of a seductive Titania when he was transformed into a donkey. His physical comedy was hilarious, from finding terror and awkwardness in his courtship with the faerie queen to revelling in it – going on to get its erect ears stroked by the gang of whimsical faeries.

Elizabeth Crarer, as a distraught Helena, amusingly suffered the pains of unrequited love. As she journeyed from lovesick spaniel to cherished lover, Shakespeare’s verse rolled off her tongue perfectly – making it tragically understandable to a contemporary audience which covered a range of ages.

Adorned with donkey’s ears, Mondahl’s playing of Bottom hit the heights

Music was spare but curated. Threaded throughout the play, there was hypnotic pleasure in witnessing the company singing and moving as one, creating a morphing momentum that carried the play as the night unfolded.

Next to this, there was light relief in the playlet – a rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe to celebrate the nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta – in which the sheer silliness of dressing up, taking on new identities and mucking around sent the audience into peals of laughter.

The relatively bare stage offered atmospheric glimpses of the natural world and offered a leafy canvas for the play set mostly in an Athenian woodland. When a fairy, played by Lily Donovan, was tasked with searching for nectar for Bottom, she wrestled with shrubbery escaping the pool’s cracks.

The troupe were mesmerising as they moved as one

Insane Root’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sometimes drawn-out and over-familiar, was fresh and accessible – with affordable tickets, an atmospheric setting and genuinely funny acting.

The night was magical and, as Bottom roused from his sleep and dusk began to fall over Eastville park, there came a real sense that we can dream of a better world.

Insane Root: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (age recommendation 10+) is at Eastville Park Swimming Pool from June 24-August 20 at 7.30pm on Tuesday and Thursday, and 6pm and 8.30pm on Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. Tickets are available from www.insaneroot.org.uk, with dynamic pricing and a local resident discount.

All photos: Jack Offord

Read more: Bristol Shakespeare Festival is back for 2022

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