Pantaloons Theatre Co presents Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

Wednesday 24th July Doors 7pm Start at 7.30pm

Tickets  £10 (£9 concessions)

Midsummer night. An enchanted forest. Puck and his musical fairy band tell a tale of lovers, mechanicals, and magical mayhem.

The Pantaloons make their much-anticipated return to Shakespeare with this timeless comedy – told, as ever, in their own distinctive and anarchic style.

The Pantaloons draw from a wide variety of popular theatre traditions, from commedia dell’arte and pantomime to stand-up comedy and silent movies, to bring what they consider to be a vital sense of “play” back to classical performance. They aim to recapture an aspect of Shakespeare’s drama which the modern naturalistic theatre has lost: the riotous energy of the clown. Hamlet tells us that the clowns in Shakespeare’s day spoke “more than is set down for them”, and the Pantaloons have found that tapping into this rich vein of anarchic humour can have a strangely moving and uplifting effect.

Crucially, it also reminds us that we are all simply participants in a game of make-believe. In our theatre, your imagination is just as important as ours. The Pantaloons ask you to become co-creators of the play-world with them; or as Shakespeare put it in the prologue to Henry V, to “piece out our imperfections with your thoughts.”

“Lively, lusty and wonderfully daft” Cambridge News (The Canterbury Tales, 2011)

“Brilliant” The Daily Telegraph (A Christmas Carol, 2010)

“Outstanding outdoor theatre” East Anglian Daily Times (Macbeth, 2010)

“Exuberant, wholehearted, fun” The Stage (Much Ado About Nothing, 2010)

“Witty, energetic and accessible” The Guardian (Much Ado About Nothing, 2010)

“If all Shakespeare was like this, I’d watch a lot more of it” Eastern Daily Press (Much Ado About Nothing, 2010)

“This summer’s must-see” The Sunday Times (Romeo & Juliet, 2009)

“Dynamic, energetic, delightful.” Three Weeks (Romeo & Juliet, 2009)

Find out more here