The play that changed the way I think about Shakespeare – Telegraph

I hope you can stop yourself from gritting your teeth when you see how the original article spells Shakespeare!

Originally posted in the Telegraph.

Top to Bottom: the Watch Your Head cast offer an ‘immersive’ approach to ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

I was lucky enough last week to attend a rehearsal for a stunning production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream that opens next Wednesday. It fulfils the criteria I outlined above for making a play work for a drama-sceptic like me.

The production takes place, in midsummer, in one of the most magnificent settings in the country – the Savill Gardens, in Windsor Great Park. And it is what the theatre company, Watch Your Head, call an “immersive” production. The audience follows the actors around the garden, as different scenes are played out in different places. There will be plenty of guidance, so no member of the audience should get lost.

Sara Langridge, whose idea the production was, first tried it out in Maidenhead a year ago; and such was the success that she, with the director, Sasha McMurray, have managed to raise the funds to achieve something more ambitious this summer. But the setting is not all. Anyone who sees this play over the next month – it runs until July 19 – will find Shakespeare brought to life in the most captivatingly original fashion by some of the finest young actors in our country.

Several are very much on the way up. Langridge, as well as devising the production, brings conviction to the part of Hermia. Jack Bannell, who plays Oberon and Theseus, has a formidable…

via The play that changed the way I think about Shakesepare – Telegraph.