While we all grew up reading Shakespeare plays, in a lot of Australian students, the fun and cheek and debauchery of Shakespeare’s plays went undetected. Enter Pop-Up Globe, a New Zealand based theatre company performing Shakespeare plays in the extremely physical and interactive way that academics suggest it would have been in Shakespeare’s day.
The flagship comedy of this season is A Midsummer Night’s Dream is pure elation to watch. Outside of the physical joy of entering a replica of Shakespeare’s second Globe Theatre in London, the production itself breathes a new, light life into the plays.
The stage opens out onto the Groundlings who are walked through, talked to, flirted with, and splashed with blood in the continuous game of playing with audience expectations through the show. The open to air venue is chilly but packed to the gunnels with keen sippers of mulled wine. Before even beginning the performance, the feat of the Pop Up itself rears its head into your mind. The Players (in costume as Tradies) are outside before you enter, posing for photos, and singing in character as Bottom's troupe of actors. The atmosphere is full of eager grins and from that high platform is continues to deliver.
