Midsummer Night's Dream by the Castle Players @ Bowes Museum

Surely just as Shakespeare intended !

There's little that can compare to a British summers' eve; the smell of cut grass, the smack of leather on willow, the distant drone of a tractor bailing hay.  Well, that's the idealistic view, the one we all hold dear as a lifelong memory, but all too often the reality is made up of dodging the rain &  shivering in the cold breeze.  Now after last nights show I have a new benchmark for an ideal summer night - sitting in the open air watching the Castle Players perform yet another masterpiece of Shakespearean majesty.

I don't think there could be anywhere in the world that would have provided a better venue for this show; the magnificent Bowes museum behind us, the dappled sunlight over the open

air 'stage' in front and the sense, even before the show started, that we were in for something quite magical.  The Castle Players, quite rightly, have built a reputation for being one of the very best companies when it comes to producing open air theatre; their use of the natural surroundings is quite brilliant and their ability to draw in the audience into an intimate space and yet to preserve the grandeur not limited by curtains, wings and stage screens is unique in the modern day of technical gadgetry. Add to this the complete joy and enthusiasm with which each and every cast member performs and it leaves you feeling quite humbled in the fact that they are, after all, an amateur production company (although purely only in name).

I learned from watching last years show that it's very difficult to single any of the cast out for individual praise; this is not me being conditionally sycophantic, they all DO play their roles to the highest level and ensure that the show overall is much much more than the sum of it's parts.  Having said that, the Director, Simon Pell deserves credit for his vision, creativity and willingness to allow a more organic flow to the show than previous versions I have seen - it was this which added to the magic of the evening and drew out the essence of Shakespeare's most fantastical of plays.

The soundscape produced for this latest offering was simply stunning - I had doubted that it would be possible to produce a soundtrack in the open air which would be wide and deep enough to truly envelope the audience but I was very wrong indeed.  Composed and recorded by Andy Yeadon, we were held in awe from the very first note, not once did the sound distort or feel strained and the acoustics, for all that we were sat outside, were as crystal clear as from any high fidelity multi speaker surround sound system.

As they proved last year by being invited to perform for the RSC Cultural Olympiad Open Stages Festival in Stratford, The Castle Players are recognised across the country as one of the very best; on the strength of this years production that reputation can only be further enhanced - a true credit to the North East and one which we can be very proud of.

Shows sell out almost as soon as tickets go on sale (and rightly so) so I'm afraid that if you haven't got tickets for this summer's production then you may be out of luck - check out their website at www.castleplayers.co.uk for details.  

What I can say is that there are two more productions confirmed - The Hound of The Baskervilles for their Winter production and Romeo & Juliet for next Summer's outdoor show (which is already writ large in my diary).  Till then, I can but dream of a midsummers eve, not too distant but one which will live long in the memory.