Bell Shakespeare is taking a dream tour

After a year spent in the wings, the cast of Bell Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is ready to put the Bard back on the road.

Gabrielle Scawthorn, Michael Howlett and Jacob Warner will be playing in Bell Shakespeare’s upcoming tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Picture: John Feder

After more than a year in the wings, the cast and crew of Sydney’s Bell Shakespeare Company are preparing to put the Bard back on the road, with a new tour of A Midsummer Night’s Dream set to traverse the nation, visiting 26 venues in over three months of performances.

Beginning in July, the tour will reprise the company’s successful 2014 production of the play, with the aim of attracting bigger and more diverse audiences across regional Australia.

“Bell Shakespeare has been mounting ambitious tours like this across the country since the end of the 90s,” said artistic director Peter Evans.

But after the curtain fell on its 2020 season, with the pandemic putting an end to live performances, he said the company is determined to make this return tour memorable.

“There is a little trepidation – we haven’t been in a rehearsal room or a theatre for more than a year – but it seems absolutely right that this play should be the one to take us back to the state.”

One of Shakespeare’s best loved comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream reflects the “true power and wonder of his plays,” said Evans.

“Sometimes it feels like we are always being asked how Shakespeare can be made more relevant and contemporary, but this (play) shows us that there is something universal and timeless in his work.”

While based on the previous 2014 school’s tour, Evans said the production will be re-imagined for a different audience and setting, focusing more on the “illusion of theatre and on the implicit physicality of A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.

“Everyone seems to think they know the play,” said Evans.

“But there is always something new to learn or draw out and this keeps the audience locked into the magic and mayhem of the whole thing from the beginning until the end.”

Announced earlier this week, each actor will play multiple parts, with the cast combining a host of familiar names as well as some emerging talent, including Ella Prince, Michael Howlett, Abbie-lee Lewis, Gabrielle Scawthorn, Jacob Warner, Kyle Morrison, Imogen Sage and Jane Montgomery Griffiths. Blighted by pandemic cancellations, Bell Shakespeare received financial aid from the New South Wales government’s Rescue and Restart Funding, as well as further cash flow relief from the federal government earlier this year.

“We can’t overstate just how lucky and grateful we are to have this support, as well as the support from our loyal audiences across the country,” said Evans.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens at the Orange Civic Theatre on July 2 and concludes at the Sydney Opera House on November 7.