A Midsummer Night's Dream

Last night my wife and I travelled a second time to see Midsummer Night's Dream. It was fantastic, such energy, vision and what a marvellous setting! Our first visit was a cancelled performance due to the awful weather. We are so delighted that we made the second journey down from Birmingham. Come on Arts Council, start backing this marvellous company!

Gill and David Gould, Birmingham (Unverified), 10/09/08

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Very good production. Fantastic Puck. Very good scene where the four humans all make fools of themsleves. Great setting. Only gripe is that they should offer senior citizens a decent discount (I was told at present you have to book a week in advance which is ludicrous and applies to everyone anyway).

asia (Unverified), 09/08/08

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I have never seen A Midsummer Night's Dream before, and I'm so glad I waited for this production - I'm convinced it could not be done any better! I never thought I'd see anything to beat Creation's Arabian Nights, but this has equalled, if not surpassed, that performance. True magic, in every sense.

Soo (Unverified), 03/08/08

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This was the best performance of A Midsummer Night's Dream I have seen. The setting worked brilliantly and it really brought the play alive. It felt as though you were actually part of the story. As always the special effects were very clever and very well done.
Creation have excelled themselves with this summer's performance, the acting was good, costumes were good and the setting great.
Don't miss out on this year's best summer performance.

LizM (Unverified), 17/07/08

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Until I saw the 2001 Creation version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I had never rated it very highly as a play. I had seen a couple of lack-lustre versions, and thought it dull. Creation changed my view and made me a convert.

This year, Creation had commissioned Zoe Seaton to again stage the play for them. This time, she opted to produce as a ‘promenade’ show. The play kicks off at a fixed point near to the box office and then Puck draws the audience round the park, so that we discover new settings and new bits of the plot.

Sometimes we sat on logs, sometimes standing, sometimes sitting on tarpaulins. It felt as if we were complicit with Puck and Oberon in the games they played with the lives of the foolish mortals and with Titania. We watched Oberon cast his spell over his queen to enchant her eyes; we eavesdropped on the increasingly hilarious misunderstandings between the two pairs of lovers and we sat in on rehearsals for the rude mechanicals’ play-within-the –play.

The promenade structure worked brilliantly in the picturesque surroundings of Headington Hill Park and it was also ideally suited to this particular play.

And into such a perfect setting, Creation placed a first-rate group of players. The performances were superb – a talented group of actors hurling themselves into a physically demanding play with evident enthusiasm. Slick costume changes and spot-on characterisation turned the lovers into the mechanicals and back again; clever use of conjuring effects reminded us of the magical nature of the piece.

This is a genuinely funny play and Creation made the most of the comic opportunities of the three groups of characters – the fairies, the mechanicals and the lovers, to demonstrate why this play remains so popular 400 years after it was first staged.

If you can only make it to one outdoor production this summer, it really should be Creation’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Stephen Briggs (Unverified), 14/07/08

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