On 10th November 2016, I went to Poole Lighthouse as part of the Shakespeare School Festival to watch two of the performances being done. These being A Midsummer Night's Dream, (done by Priestlands School), and Henry V (done by Poole Grammar School).
A Midsummer Night's Dream was, as it should be, incredibly funny. Seriously, it was brilliantly well directed, and all the actors portrayed their characters and lines perfectly which really added to the comedic effect. It was much more vulgar than I'd seen before in SSF; lots of brutal snogging going on, some trousers dropping, and even a cheeky hand that had a direct descent course to someone's crotch. Their take on Bottom becoming an ass was interesting too, as instead of becoming a donkey; he 'made an ass of himself'. This did make his craving for hay a little out of place though; then again, considering Oberon seemed to be a drug dealer, maybe he just had a strange case of the munchies. One thing I felt didn't quite work was casting Francis Flute as a girl. I'm all for equality, but it felt like something was lost comedy wise by not having a boy with actual beard capability complaining about having to play a girl. However, even that was well done with her putting a bra over her clothes filled with marshmallows.
Despite being a historical play, I quite enjoyed Henry V. The actors portrayed their characters well, the battle was well choreographed with hockey sticks, and there was even some comedy with the French accents (though I know not if this was intended). The problem I found, however, was I couldn't really hear most of what was being said. I can't blame this all on the actors, as I was very far back, but other groups had managed to cater for that fact. The problem this brought was that it was hard to tell the characters apart. I was too far back to see their faces and their clothing was rather similar, so I struggled to keep up. There was a scene where the King goes undercover to talk with his men, and he was good at it too because I completely lost which one was him as soon as his crown was off. Despite this though, they still acted very well and made history enjoyable to watch, which is a great feet indeed.
Sounds great! I've never seen a big performance of Midsummer - I feel like you need to spend a fair amount of money to make it a decent one but it sounds like they certainly pulled it off by doing something original!