The Manchester Shakespeare Company’s first Post-Covid production for is ‘Summer Dreaming-The Musical’ an irreverent musical adaptation of William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Set in the woods around the City of Mancia in the mid 1970’s ‘Summer Dreaming’ follows the lives and loves of four very different couples as they struggle against the odds to make the course of true love run smooth.
The betrothal of The Duke of Wilmslow to Lady Penelope Arcadia is cause for celebration: a concert given by the good people of Mancia in the honour of the ‘happy’ couple.
But the workers at Truss & Son, led by Shop Steward Peter Quince, plan to use the occasion to launch a subversive theatrical attack on the aristocracy. Talented, but frustrated shift workers Nick Bottom and Frances Flute seize their chance to escape from the factory by hijacking Pete’s dire Marxist-Leninist version of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’.
A different kind of arranged marriage is causing Hermia Strains a more immediate problem: Her father has promised her hand (and everything else) to Factory boss’s son Donald Truss, in order to facilitate his rise in polite society. Hermia has other plans though and intends to elope with her penniless true love Leroy Sanders through the enchanted Forest of Ardwick to stay with Leroy’s Gran in Glossop.
Pursued by the furious Donald and his devoted but recently dumped ex, Helena Handcart, the lovers soon become lost in dark woods, frequented by Hippies, Druids, Fairies and that ‘Merry wanderer of the night’ Robbo Goodstuff and his sidekick Deirdre Turnip.
Hearts are broken and mended before the night is out and Nick Bottom has the trip of his life when he becomes entangled in a chemically enhanced custody battle between Oberon and his estranged wife Titania, Queen of the Druids. Contains some adult humour and language.
The Production Includes:
75% Neurodivergent Cast, Mancia, Salforde-Upon-Irwell and The Forest of Ardwick, A Custody Battle, Posh People getting married(reluctantly) Feminism in action, Industrial relations, ‘Hedwig and the Angry Inch’, The Equal Pay Act 1973, Lenin’s Tomb, Hippies, Druids and mind-altering plants, A Wrestling Match, The invention of ‘Dogging’, A 1970’s Talent Show & Lots of new songs!
The Manchester Shakespeare Company (Gina Frost & John Topliff) have been producing their thoroughly Mancunian versions of Shakespeare’s plays since 2013. Including: ’Desperate Measures’, ‘Before Juliet’, ‘12 Nights or WTF?’ ‘Winter’, ‘Will & Anne’ and ‘Will Whittington & His Cat’.
Contact: mcrshakespeareco@gmail.com 07498 406971
