Southwark Playhouse Borough has announced the cast for its upcoming production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Toby Hulse.
This fresh adaptation of Shakespeare’s beloved comedy will run from 5 to 27 September, with press night set for Thursday 11 September at 7.00pm.
Set in London, 1905, the production follows the Jenkins siblings—Nancy, Robert, and Cecil—who decide to put on a play to escape a dreary afternoon. What unfolds is a magical retelling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, filled with pirates, lions, fairies, and a whole lot of mischief.
The cast includes Martin Bassindale (Hellboy: The Crooked Man), Daisy Ann Fletcher (The Doncastrian Chalk Circle, National Theatre and CAST), Fintan Hayeck (Sleeping Beauty, Oxford Playhouse), Lara Grace Ilori (Up(Beat), Southwark Playhouse Borough), Andy Umerah (Ted Lasso, Apple TV), and Dewi Wykes (The Famous Five – A New Musical, Chichester Festival Theatre).
Over 2,000 free tickets will be made available to local Southwark schools for special matinee performances, ensuring the production reaches a wide and diverse audience.
Director Toby Hulse said:
“The story that is told in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is universal, and, as human beings, we haven’t changed all that much. We still do foolish things when we fall in and out of love; we still want to believe in happy endings; and we are still a little bit frightened by things that go bump in the night.
What is exciting about Dream is that it has all sorts of humour in it, from the sort of painful observation of human behaviour that we might expect from The Office, to the sort of daft slapstick we might expect from The Chuckle Brothers, to the sort of outright nonsense we might expect from Morecambe and Wise.
This will be a production for everyone – those who know the play and those who don’t, Shakespeare-lovers and Bard-a-phobes, regular theatre-goers and those coming to see it for the very first time.”
The creative team includes Georgie White (Set and Costume Design), Will Monks (Lighting Design), and Fraser Owen (Sound Design).
Listings and ticket information can be found here.
