As I said, we made plans to hop back on the train on Monday morning to return to Buhmingum for a Shakespeare for Kids production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. We had read a storybook version of it (along with Hamlet, Macbeth and Romeo and Juliet), but we didn’t really know if we would be able to follow the real thing on stage. Luckily, it strayed heartily from the original language, but did a great job of retaining the essence of the story and the more famous quotes and nuances of Billy’s original.
I’m going to let Savannah tell us about the play while I play the ‘scwibe’…
Puck is the main character. He’s a troublemaker, and a sprite. In the play he had green facepaint all over him with a bit of black to look like leaves. Then it started with Theseus and Hippolyta, Theseus is the Duke of Athens and Hippolyta is his Amazon bride-to-be. Hermia’s father came out and told the Duke that Hermia has to marry Demetrius, because Demetrius approves the wedding and so does he. Hermia doesn’t approve because she loves Lysander, who loves her. Helena, Hermia’s lifelong friend, loves Demetrius, but there’s no hope for that because Demetrius is going to marry Hermia, like I just said. On Midsummer Night Eve, Lysander and Hermia run away into the woods. But before they ran away, Hermia told Helena that they were going. Helena told Demetrius that they had run away, so maybe he would change his mind and wish to marry her. But when she told Demetrius, with his sword, he ran finto the woods cursing revenge on Lysander. Helena followed, she pretended to be a dog so she could serve him. Lysander and Hermia, still in the woods, decided to rest a bit. Lysander wanted to sleep next to Hermia, but she said that since they weren’t married they shouldn’t sleep next to each other just yet.
Oberon, King of the Fairies and Titania, his queen, right then were in a quarrel, they didn’t care that it was pouring down rain or not. They were fighting over who should get a little Indian boy as a page. Then, after Titania and the boy left, Oberon had heard about an herb that in sleeping eyes of anyone it would make them fall in love with the first thing they see when they wake up. He told Puck to go and get this herb so he could get revenge on Titania to get the Indian boy. After Puck left for his errand, Oberon’s peace was shattered by seeing Demetrius and Helena tramping through the woods. Helena was still reminding Demetrius how much she loved and adored him. After they were out of Oberon’s sight, Puck returned from his errand. Titania was already asleep so Oberon squeezed the juice into Titania’s eyes. He said a tiny speech and told Puck to put the juice into a boy with Athenian clothing’s eyes, so he’d love that girl who followed behind him.
Anyway, the highlights are that these men were putting on a play for the Duke’s wedding, and one of the actors, Bottom, was hiding behind a bush during their rehearsal, and Puck gave him the head of a donkey. When he came out, the other actors fled. That’s when Titania awoke and saw Bottom. Through the love juice she wanted to love him, and she called her fairies to do stuff for him.
Oberon saw Helena with Lysander chasing after her, and he told Puck that he had squeezed the juice into the wrong eyes. Oberon told Puck to fix it all. After Puck fixed it, it was time for the Duke’s wedding, and they all woke up, and thought it was all a dream. The Duke saw Helena and Demetrius and Hermia and Lysander together and said that they should all get married when he got married too.
After the wedding, they had the play. The play was funny because they made a boy play the girl in the play and the boy put balloons under his dress that he wore. When she was trying to kill herself because her boyfriend had killed himself because he thought a lion had killed her, she killed herself by popping the balloons. After the play, everyone went to sleep again, and it stopped raining, and then the play ended.
Thanks Savannah.
As I mentioned, there was another bit of excitement on the train ride home. We were sitting next to a couple of guys that were twisting around their Rubik’s Cubes very quickly. We kept watching them and noticed that one of them was wearing a Rubik’s Cube competition shirt. We asked if we could make a video of them doing the Cube. He wasn’t happy with his 20 second time, his average is 12, but he has done it in NINE seconds before. They were on their way back to Manchester from a competition in Bristol, and pretty tired, so we accepted his apology…
We’re on our way to Edinburgh this weekend, we’ll keep you posted.
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