Review by Amanda Dookie
75 min/Dance/Comedy
A MacSummer Night’s Dream is a love story told through dance based off of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Using celtic music, dance and colourful tartans, A MacSummer Night’s Dream tells the tale of Theseus and Hippolyta with a wee Scottish twist. Aside from a monologue from Danu (a rendition of the character Titania), the rest of the all female cast of dancers from Caithream Celtic Dance Fusion dance their way through this famous story of love, magic, and sovereignty without spoken words, in an energetic display of interpretive dancing and acting. The play depicts the epic fight for love by mixing elements of tap, jazz, highland dancing, and ballet. Musical accompaniments include pipe music, creating an atmosphere from the Scottish Highlands, with a mix of pop music (tunes by Michael Jackson and from Titanic), allowing the audience to make proper references to the subject matter during times of romance or comic relief.
Since the monologues are based off of Shakespeare’s writing, the play’s real strength and creativity come from the talent of the dancers and choreography, which are well-staged. On opening night, the audience seemed to enjoy the scenes of high intensity highland dancing, especially when performed in the large group. Seeing a depiction of A Midsummer Night’s Dream told through dance gives the story a light-hearted feel. The play exposes the audience to Scottish dance and tradition, as well as to a story from one of history’s most famous playwrights in a modern and fun way. While I feel that the intermission is unnecessary for a performance of this length, it is worth the wait and I would recommend this play for anyone who enjoys theatrical dance performances.
A MacSummer Night’s Dream is playing at Venue 3 – Academic Hall (133 Seraphin-Marion, University of Ottawa) on Friday June 15 at 11:00pm, Saturday June 16 at 3:30pm, Sunday June 17 at 7:00pm, Thursday June 21 at 5:00pm, June 18 at 5:30pm, and Friday June 22 at 11:00pm.
Be sure to see this performance; you will enjoy the comedy and admire the calibre of dance.
This was a lot of fun! I love the energy in these lovely dancers. They hardly seemed to dance anything twice – the show had a huge amount of variety in movement.