The Popular Mechanicals

The Popular Mechanicals
By Keith Robertson, William Shakespeare and Tony Taylor. State Theatre Company of South Australia / Sydney Theatre Company. Directed by Sarah Giles. Wharf 2 Theatre, Sydney. 8 April - 13 May, 2017

Here’s a touring company from Adelaide showing Sydney exactly how to deliver sublime theatrical comedy. The State Theatre Company of South Australia have revived a show first directed by Geoffrey Rush in 1987, and it turns up at the Wharf 2 Theatre as bright as fresh paint. 

The comedy cast of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Peter Quince, Nick Bottom, Snug, Starveling, Snout and Flute ­— have been summoned to present a play for the wedding of the Duke of Athens. A more amateur bunch it would be hard to imagine but, under the untried direction of the local carpenter and with the bombastic lead of the village weaver, they set to. 

Using large and welcome slices of Shakespearean text, the six amateurs develop their version of Pyramus and Thisbe. But Bottom disappears during rehearsals — he has his own adventures off-stage in a donkey’s head — and our ‘actors’ are forced to hire Mowldie, a particularly mouldy performer with a passion for drinking.

These Elizabethan non-performers couldn’t be funnier. Julie Forsyth is brilliant as Starveling, on her off-stage sewing machine or singing in a particularly strangled fashion; Rory Walker is delirious as Quince, driving his absurd cast towards their goal.

And there’s Amber McMahon cross-dressing as Snug, urging her pals towards the longest fart joke in history, Tim Overton as a mixed-up Flute, or Lori Bell as the moustached, long-haired Snout. Charles Mayer makes less that you expect of Bottom but returns as a magnificent Mowldie, downing ever last drop from a cask of wallop. 

Direction is by Sarah Giles. I can only say that her Dance of the Rubber Chickens had me gasping for breath.

Frank Hatherley

Photographer: Lisa Tomasetti

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