A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“The course of true love never did run smooth.” Dashed expectations force flummoxed lovers into the mystical wilderness, where enchantment and confusion await, all for the audience’s gleeful benefit. Director Patrick Swanson’s production celebrates the creative center of dreams, and how the spirit world can interfere with mortal destinies. Likely first performed as a formal entertainment at the wedding of Queen Elizabeth I’s godchild, Shakespeare’s hilarious and hallucinatory A Midsummer Night’s Dream is also his most enduringly popular play. In Paddy’s remix, viewers are guests at a wedding celebration that has been going strong for 400 years. Set in a hideaway location that simultaneously evokes Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the “White Box” of Peter Brook’s 1970 production, this is a rave that celebrates the sublime and the ridiculous. Boasting the sweetest and most vicious love scenes, and music that both stimulates and soothes the savage beast, this is the party to crash!