A Review of the Trinity Garden Play A Midsummer Night’s Dream

The first and most important rule of a garden play is that it must be fun. Let The Playhouse and The O’Reilly have their serious shows, the Trinity term garden play is an opportunity for a laugh both as cast and audience. This is a rule that the Trinity Players took to heart this year, director Alex Evers allowing his actors the free rein to truly go to town with their roles. From some pretty dramatic fighting between Lysander and Demetrius to the costume choices for the fairies.

I have said before that many shows hold the distinctive imprint of the director and this is certainly the case here. There is something of Evers in every decision, in particular the humour and the casting of primarily male actors in the roles of the fairies. Complete with slip dresses and elaborate make up, these characters helped to truly draw out the humour in the play. Said make up, being colourful and jewelled was definitely one of the stand out elements of the performance and deserves commendation. As for the fairies themselves, George Loynes’ Puck relied heavily on the physicality which can be brought to the character. This physical element was exploited for peak comedic effect, particularly in his interactions with Noah Leach’s Oberon.

When it comes to cast, a shoutout must be given to Grace Elliot-Sherratt’s Peter Quince, whose performance stole the spotlight despite the presence of Bottom (Dominic Murphy O Connor) in her scenes. Bottom was played as the classically annoying and dramatic amateur actor, the cast member no doubt having fun with the role. Yet, those having the most amount of fun were undoubtedly Elliot Wood as Demetrius and Adam Paterson as Lysander, the two fighting it out for Helena’s affections in the most overstated way possible. Both actors came into themselves once in their lovesick states, imbuing their scenes with enough comedy to detract from the central action taking place. Alongside these melodramatic and highly physical fights for attention, Hermia (Amelia Bishop) and Helena (Nina Bayford) both presented strong performances being a pleasure to watch.

Of course, there are always challenges to staging an outdoor performance and one of those is certainly staging. The limited staging while leaving a lot to be imagined was certainly the best choice, with props also being simple and often used for comedic value. Unfortunately, other challenges include battling the elements in order to be heard, and certainly projection was a slight problem in some places. Equally, the seating was not the most ideally laid out for all audience members to be able to see what was taking place.

At the end of the day, a garden play is supposed to be fun and not to take itself too seriously and that was exactly what this achieved. With moments of corpsing and the occasional in joke, this was a performance which encapsulated the purpose of a college play. Filled with primarily physical humour which perfectly complimented the comedy of the script, this was exactly what was needed amongst the pressure of exams.