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A Midsummer Night's Dream
Review

A Midsummer Night's Dream

January 24 2007

Sydney Festival
Yohangza Theatre Company from South Korea has been touring its version of A Midsummer Night's Dream to festivals around the world since the premiere home season in 2001. Yohangza has had great success in Japan (2003), Ecuador, Colombia and Poland (2004), the Edinburgh Fringe, El Salvador and Cuba (2005), then Germany and two venues in the UK including London's Barbican Centre (2006). And after their all too brief season at Riverside Parramatta, the production will be seen at the Hong Kong Festival in March.

All this is by way of introducing a company whose acrobatic, cartoonishly comical, all-singing, all-dancing, kaleidoscopic approach to theatre is outrageously tightly-choreographed and well-oiled while, at the same time, as fresh and spontaneous as if the company began rehearsals just last week.

Running at a non-stop 90 minutes, Yohangza's approach to Shakespeare's comedy is freewheeling and irreverent. Yes, there are four lovers into whose tangled web the audience is quickly woven. Yes there is an unfortunate magical event which transforms one of the participants into an animal. But not an ass, rather a watermelon-guzzling Pig who also demands Tim-Tams, meat pies and Vegemite.

Otherwise, leave your Shakespearean prejudices at the door and leap - Crouching Tiger-style - into a world of magic, martial arts, music, percussion and humour that needs no translation. Although if you insist on a synopsis, you will want to know that handsome Hang is in love with beautiful Byock, but at her father's insistence, she has to marry lovesome Loo. Byock tells her best friend icky Ick that she and Hang are going to run away. Unfortunately Ick is also in love with Byock and sets out to derail the plan.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the midsummer night, the Dokkebi are having fun. These elf-sprite creatures of Korean folklore are mischievous and have a significant Achilles heel: they hate the smell of urine. Ajumi knows this. Ajumi is a cranky old herbalist whose life's ambition is to find the 1000-year old ginseng plant thus securing a significant income stream for ever after. The Dokkebi's attempts to thwart her result in one of the funniest (and possibly the only) pee joke scenes in Shakespeare.

Lest you're wondering, the Dokkebi are also Puck - split into twins - and played with unfailing verve and comic brilliance by Jin Lee and Seong-Yong Han. And Ajumi (So-Young Park) is also Bottom with pig's ears; while Oberon and Titania swap genders and ... well, you get the idea.

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Performed in Korean with English surtitles, this is a brilliant entertainment for all the family. At times you need speed-reading skills to keep up with the surtitles, but the action and acting are of such a high and hilarious standard, you'll soon give up on them and go with the flow.

While aimed straight at the funny bone, director/writer Jung Ung Yang is also a deadly serious theatre-maker and this Dream comes with acclaim from around the world for very good reasons: it's wonderful. Must-mentions are choreographer: Jung-Sun Kim, make-up: Song-What Chai, sound design: Min-soo Kang; lighting: Kook-Koon Yeo and music director: Eun-Jung Kim.

The only sadness is that it was not given greater prominence in the Sydney Festival's marketing plans to ensure the largest possible audience roll-up. Opening night at Riverside was nowhere near capacity and the absence of virtually all the local A-list at the after-show drinks suggests something awry in the way the company has been presented to Parramatta - which has a dazzling festival gem in its midst.

A Midsummer Night's Dream, Riverside Parramatta to January 27; ph: 8839 3399, or boxoffice.riversideparramatta.com.au, www.sydneyfestival.org.au

 

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