All-male cast for Shakespeare

Propeller, in association with The Touring Partnership, is bringing A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Comedy of Errors to Nottingham’s Theatre Royal later this month.

Directed by Propeller’s artistic director, Edward Hall, all of the characters are played by male actors and both productions have a unique Propeller spin on them.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream has enchanted packed houses all over the world.

Set in classical Athens, it is Shakespeare’s most magical play, where love and illusion collide when two pairs of lovers become entangled in fairy mischief on the eve of a Royal Wedding. Dreams and reality become interchangeable and romantic chaos ensues.

There is influence in the look of the play from a Czech animator called Švankmajer, who Michael Pavelka, the designer, and Hall watched.

In Shakespeare’s smartest and most farcical play, The Comedy of Errors, two sets of estranged twins, separated at birth, find themselves in the same city 25 years later with hilarious consequences.

A series of mistaken identities, assumed personas, and wild mishaps bring a family crisis - so complicated that time itself loses the plot – into heart-warming focus.

Said Edward Hall: “Our Comedy of Errors is set in a sort of 1980s package holiday island, where there are sombreros, sunglasses, too much sangria and sun, and people getting into trouble.

“It’s colourful, it’s fast, it’s funny.

“It starts with a set of twins being washed up from a shipwreck in the town where their respective missing twins already live, and it goes on to show how one simple idea of mistaken identity can create the type of chaos in people’s lives that genuinely starts to convince them that they are mad – properly mad.”

And Edward has a tip for people who think that they cannot understand Shakespeare.

He said: “Next time you listen to a long complicated speech in Shakespeare, listen to the end. Because at the end of all these complicated speeches you’ll get two or three lines that sum up everything you need to know so you don’t miss anything in the plot.

“So for all those people who didn’t get everything, he then looks after you at the end.”

The two plays are being performed between Tuesday 18th – Saturday 22nd February. Tickets are £26.50 - £16 plus concessions.

Call the box office on 0115 989 5555 or visit www.trch.co.uk.