Culture Vulture???

In London you have a range of cultural activities on your doorstep - you often don’t take advantage of this, but it’s reassuring to know that you can should you wish to drag yourself off the sofa. This week I did something I’ve never done - I went to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream . Somewhat shamefully, I’ve never seen an RSC production, nor that particular play.

To be honest I didn’t know much about the plot beforehand - I knew it was the play which contained Bottom and has the best use of a horse’s head outside The Godfather - but being a Shakespeare comedy I figured it would contain mistaken identity, star-crossed lovers, perhaps some cross dressing, and maybe a random bunch of Muscovites. So I took my seat - American tourists to my right and posh sloaney types to my left.

I was slightly annoyed that Bottom was played with a Brummie accent - not that I had a particular problem with that, it was just a bad rendition of a Brummie accent - and towards the end the play does almost descend into ‘Carry On Shakespeare’. But this was proper Shakespeare; with ACTING and SHOUTING and PROJECTION. Very funny, well acted and a thoroughly enjoyable 3 hours.

You can always tell the quality of the cast by looking at the credits in the actor’s biographies. Proper actors will have at some point in their career appeared in The Bill/Casualty/Holby City. A top notch actor will be one whose been in all three. Disappointingly I have to report that according to programme with this RSC production, plenty of the cast had done sterling work in regional theatre but only two have appeared in The Bill, and another has appeared in both Casualty and Holby City. However, I can report that one had appeared in ‘Allo ‘Allo and another proudly includes The Dick Emery Show amongst their TV work. Very reassuring.