Play’s dream run amid Covid nightmare

Bell Shakespeare Company is on the road for the first time since the pandemic started, with frequent updates to the itinerary.

Jane Montgomery Griffiths as Bottom, left, Ella Prince as Puck and Kyle Morrison as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Picture: Brian Cassey

What was to have been a 26-stop tour across six states and territories of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream has instead become a Covid drama for the Bell Shakespeare Company, which is having to continually ­update its itinerary while on the road because of changing lockdown restrictions.

The production that was to have opened in Orange, NSW, in early July instead had its premiere in Darwin last week, after the cast and crew spent the mandatory fortnight in quarantine.

The company was then able to present the play in Cairns at the weekend, and will travel to Rockhampton for another performance on Tuesday night.

Actor Jane Montgomery Griffiths, who plays one of the “rude mechanicals”, Nick Bottom, said it was a wonderful experience to be on stage and performing for an appreciative audience.

“We had to stop for spontaneous applause,” she said. “This is a play that grows and becomes something joyous because of that interaction between the cast and the audience. You feel that there is something really magical about the play and everybody in it.”

Bell Shakespeare’s artistic director, Peter Evans, said the tour itinerary was being updated on the road as lockdown restrictions changed across different jurisdictions. It is Bell Shakespeare’s first national tour since the lockdowns started in March last year.

After its Queensland dates, the company will travel to Hobart and Launceston, and Evans said he was still hopeful of being able to present the play in Melbourne and Sydney.

“We had lots of different scenarios, with different venues and different states over the past couple of months,” he said.

“The actors have been so resilient and up for it. They’ve been working on Zoom and staying ­incredibly focused.”

In Bell Shakespeare’s production, eight actors – including Ella Prince as Puck and Kyle Morrison as Oberon – play up to three roles each.

Griffiths portrays Nick Bottom, usually a male character, as a “rather stout middle-aged woman with a Margaret Thatcher hairdo” – inspired by the leader of an amateur dramatics group in England.

She said she had appeared in previous productions of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was delighted by the cast Evans had put together for Bell Shakespeare.

“It’s a beautiful company of ­actors, certainly the best cast that I’ve worked with in this play,” she said.

“They are young and energetic and passionate. It’s a beautiful, mutually affirming relation­ship we have.”