LIMERICK'S Island TheatreCompany has returned to the ancient St Mary's Cathedral for its new production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. It is perhaps ironic that, within this spacious setting, they are presenting the smallest scale production of this play I have seen.
The most obviously diminished feature is the cast, here reduced to a mere seven, six of whom are required to play multiple roles. The exception is Derek Chapman as Puck, and even this appears to have been a late decision. They might as well have stuck to their original guns; if the quartet of young, bewildered lovers can also play the "rude mechanicals" - Peter Quince's strolling players - really, anything goes.
There is a price to be paid for this economy. There can be numerous approaches to realising the extraordinary text, in which the spirit world manipulates humans in the forest outside Athens. It can be powerfully sinister, reducing the people to exploited creatures. Buy if the same faces keep popping up in contrasting roles, with only token costume add ons to differentiate them, it is hardly possible to have more than one line of approach; and that is, inevitably, comedy.
To give director Terry Devlin his due, he clearly knew this, and the thrust of his production is continuously towards laughter. The lost lovers, played by Feidhlim Hillery, Fionnula O'Shea, Dermot Arrigan and Catherine Punch, go over the top from the start and maintain a farcical note thereafter. Eamon Maguire and Ann Marie Horan double, logically enough, as Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania, but their authority in both roles is adulterated.
Carping apart, the production is often very funny, and Dermot Arrigan is a comic discovery; not unreasonable compensation for a Dream without its nightmare.
