A Midsummer Night's Dream

Directed by Karen Carleton
Performed in St Enda's Park, Rathfarnham, Thursday to Saturday 20-22 & 27-29 June 2019

The performance area for Summer Shakespeare in St Enda's Park

 

This comedy was written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1595 and 1596. Across its five acts its multi-layered examination of love and its vagaries, has long been one of the most popular of Shakespeare’s plays.

The play opens with Theseus and Hippolyta planning their wedding, which is due to take place in four days time.

Shakespeare uses a similar multiple plotting device to that which he used in 'The Taming of the Shrew' and other earlier comedies. The overarching plot is of Duke Theseus of Athens and his impending marriage to an Amazonian warrior, Hippolyta, whom Theseus has recently conquered and brought back to Athens to be his bride. Their marriage ends the play. They share this concluding ceremony with the four young lovers Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, who have fled into the forest nearby to escape the Athenian law and to pursue one another, whereupon they are subjected to a complicated series of mix-ups. Eventually all is righted by fairy magic, but the fairies have their own quarrels over one who falls in love with an Athenian artisan who wears an ass’s head.

Four separate strands or plots interact with one another and, although this is one the Bard's shorter plays, it is considered to be one of his masterpieces.

Balally Players presented William Shakespeare’s most popular and loved comedy in a refreshing and inventive production at Pearse Park, St. Enda’s, Rathfarnham, Dublin 16.

The outdoor performances were on Thursday to Saturday, 20, 21 and 22 June and again on Thursday to Saturday 27, 28 and 29 June 2019 at 7:30pm in the Walled Garden of St Enda's Park, Rathfarnham.

Twenty two Balally Players performers are involved in this dynamic ensemble, directed by Karen Carleton, including some local favourites and some fresh new faces too. In the garden setting at St. Enda’s, we follow the lovers and the mechanicals as they journey into the spirit world with Oberon, Titania, Puck and two diminutive fairies and as night falls in the park, Balally Players are delighted to present this evocative, joyful and funny piece of theatre.

You can view and/or download a copy of the programme as a PDF file here.

The photographs below were taken at the dress rehearsal on Wednesday 19 June 2019.

Photography: Declan Brennan

 

As in previous years, the contingency plan for wet weather was to move the performance to An Halla Mór in the Pearse Museum in St Enda’s Park. Within an hour of the first performance it looked as if that might be necessary, but fortunately the rain passed and the show went on in th Walled Garden as planned that evening and also on the subsequent dates in the run.

St Enda's Park is home to the Pearse Museum, which is housed where Patrick Pearse lived and ran his innovative Irish-speaking school, Scoil Éanna, between 1910 and 1916.