Multi award-winning ensemble The Faction return with their unique and magical take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Renowned for their intelligent interrogation of classic texts combined with powerful group physicality, this new production will be a fresh look at one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies.
Re-examining the linguistic detail of Shakespeare’s verse, The Faction create unforgettable visual moments, unleashing the magic, energy and mayhem of this work, from the raw power of the fairies’ rituals to an ass’s head created entirely from the ensemble’s arms and fingers.
One Midsummer’s night, four young lovers, six local tradespeople and an entire kingdom of warring fairies descend upon the Athenian woods. This production will take advantage of the beautiful architecture of Wilton’s Music Hall, fusing the character of the building with the design of the set.
Examining the intricacies of the text and stripping audiences of their preconceptions, The Faction will explore the aftermath of war and the sexual and power politics at play in this complex comedy. Doubling will be used to highlight the mirroring across the Athenian, Mechanical and Fairy worlds with doubles chosen through intense scrutiny of the text to bring out new interpretations of each character. The show will present a new interpretation of the fairies, creating innovative and muscular characterisations that will step away from the traditional presentations of the Fairy world.
Director Mark Leipacher comments, We’re living in a really strange time of social upheaval and paradigm shifts in our society. That’s true too of the world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Shakespeare’s text gives us evidence of a war just finished, unemployment, the climate changing, all the time a royal wedding is on every mind. Out of that emerges this extraordinarily joyful comedy. The show is about genuine mayhem – the excuse to go off the rails for two hours or so and then, at the end of a dream that’s both funny and disturbing, re-emerge into reality a little bit altered.
The Faction have a diverse, representative and balanced company with 50:50 gender parity on stage. In this production this will be achieved through the re-gendering of Puck.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is at Wilton’s Music Hall 26th – 30th June 2018.
