The triumphant return of Shakespeare In The Park

IT seems to have been conceived as a party for the younger generations: Shakespeare’s iambic pentameters are sometimes sung to hip-hop music. The giddy, gaudy production designs are perfect for Instagram and TikTok. The Gen Z obsession with gender fluidity and non-binary identities are honoured with boys dressed like girls and girls dressed like boys. There’s even a runway extending out of the stage for actors to vogue, sashay and swivel RuPaul-style.

The combined effect of it all is an exuberant, post-pandemic, go-woke-or-go-broke celebration which defies the fact that its source material is an Elizabethan-era play written 430 years ago.

Singapore Repertory Theatre makes a return to Shakespeare In The Park (SITP) after a five-year hiatus with A Midsummer Night’s Dream – and boy, is it making up for lost time. Rarely has its SITP production been this much enjoyable and au courant, even if previous titles such Julius Caesar (2018) and Twelfth Night (2012) were top-notch productions.

Perhaps it has to do with A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself, a frisky and frolicsome romantic comedy filled with fairies and a donkey, magic spells and love potions, unrequited crushes and mismatched suitors. It takes place in an enchanted forest and concludes with wedding bells for three couples. In between, there’s a lot of farcical humour which most directors can’t resist milking for big easy laughs. 

(The last rip-roaring Singapore production of Midsummer was barely a year ago, when Malay theatre company Teater Ekamatra staged a contemporary, music-filled adaptation that had audiences and critics leaping to their feet in unanimous praise.)

For this production, director Guy Unsworth has transferred the Athenian tale to a modern-day oil rig that looks very much like the ones in Jurong Island. Theseus (played by Ghafir Akbar), the Duke of Athens in the original play, is here the head of an oil corporation who wants to marry off his daughter Hermia (Natalie Yeap) to the respectable young man, Demetrius (Nicholas Chan). But Hermia has her heart set on Lysander (Timothy Wan), while her best friend Helena (Vanessa Kee) is pining after Demetrius, who happens to be her former lover. When Hermia and Lysander make plans to run off to a nearby forest – with Helena and Demetrius hot on their heels – the four find themselves under the spell of fairies. 

In the original play, the fairy king Oberon (also played by Ghafir) is responsible for the love spells dispensed by his right-hand sprite Puck (Krish Natarajan). But in this production, director Unsworth makes a brilliant gender switch, so that it’s the fairy queen Titania (Julie Wee) who dominates the proceedings by pulling the strings and deciding who falls for whom – which, of course, includes tricking Oberon into falling in love with a donkey-headed man (Daniel Jenkins). (In traditional production, it is Oberon who plays the trick on Titania.) 

The gender benders don’t end there. Puck is a non-binary sprite with a hairy chest wearing a dress. King Oberon sports a skirt with a train alongside his large finagle of gender-fluid fairies. If there was inherent sexism in Shakespeare’s script, Unsworth’s direction tries to rectify it for the age of woke. Production design by Richard Kent and lighting design by Gabriel Chan are excellent, choreography by Tan Rui Shan is sure-footed, and music by Mervin Wong is perfectly-pitched for youthful tastes. 

Shakespearean line delivery is not always easy for Singapore’s talent pool, but SITP regulars Wee, Ghafir and Jenkins speak the words so lucidly, one never needs pause to digest the archaic dialogue. Some of the newcomers must be commended too: Natarajan as Puck spins the Bard’s dialogue into effortless poetry and hip-hop rhymes; Kee as Helena finds comedic gold in every line; Crenshaw Yeo in a minor role as a performer at the Duke’s wedding brings the house down with his marvellous singing.

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Despite the usual Shakespearean play runtime of nearly three hours, this Midsummer never feels dull or tedious. It is a brash, boisterous, big-hearted party – and everyone is invited.

Shakespeare In The Park: A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs from now till May 28 at Fort Canning Park.