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6 hours ago
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Not every undergraduate Shakespeare show at the Edinburgh fringe makes headlines but this one brings stardust by association. Suri Noelle, the 20-year-old daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, appears with her fellow drama students from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Mellon University. However, it’s a bit of an event regardless – the UK premiere of a “modern translation” of A Midsummer Night’s Dream adapted by Jeff Whitty, a Tony award-winner for the riotous Avenue Q.
That show, newly returned to the West End, is populated by some horny puppets and Whitty’s Dream is similarly frisky. Often more lustful than lovestruck, Noelle’s Helena prowls after Demetrius (Logan Yao) on all fours, Puck (Eli Strain) bares his nipples during the “up and down” speech and when Titania (Siahvash Marshall) instructs the fairies to show Bottom some courtesies, it fuels an orgy.
The show has a teenage energy – the lovers are described as “bright young things” – but this is not a total rewrite like the high-school Taming of the Shrew, 10 Things I Hate About You. Whitty retains many of Shakespeare’s speeches but tweaks certain lines to elucidate meaning. For example, in the opening scene, Theseus’s “earthlier happy is the rose distill’d” becomes “happier is the rose plucked for perfume”. Most alterations work just about seamlessly but there are also colloquial additions: Theseus tells the protesting Hermia “let’s put a pin in it” while Bottom later jarringly declares himself “jonesing for a bale of hay”. Most audaciously, yet effectively, Whitty takes a line from Shakespeare and fuses it into a new couplet with words of his own, as he does with Hippolyta’s jibes at Quince.
Kim Weild’s production takes full advantage of this Spiegeltent-style venue’s mirrored interior, with the characters literally running rings around each other. (Strain’s elfin Puck adds the odd forward roll and plié.) Zhuang Kang’s design includes woodcut-style forests and factories, a nod to industrial Pittsburgh which – though the setting is still spoken of as Athens – informs themes of class and social status with the arrival of the rude mechanicals. Bri Johnson’s elegant costumes include some magnificent millinery and a dash of tartan.
In a heatwave, the climate disorder of the “forgeries of jealousy” speech should really burn through but it’s lukewarm and the play’s darker undercurrent is missing. Bottom’s transformation is also not staged to full effect, though there’s a shiny ass’s head to match the play’s metallic imagery.
As for Noelle, she sparkles in the comedy throughout as well as in the despair of Helena’s Act 1 Scene 1 monologue, imploringly offered with wide eyes to the front row. Elsewhere, Celia Evans is a wonderfully cowardly lion, Rusty Daniel’s Pyramus makes a bid for the world’s longest death scene and even Moyo Ifafore’s Quince falls for Bottom. The cast’s delivery is crisp, the energy unflagging throughout 90 minutes – bookended by folk songs – that go like a dream.
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At Assembly @ St Andrew Square, Edinburgh, until 19 August
