The Handlebards- A Midsummer Night's Dream

Since I've started my new role as a reviewer at Small City Big Personality I have definately been more open to trying new things.  So when I was asked if I wanted to see an outdoor bicycle powered performance of Shakespeare's A Midsummers Night Dream at Burmieston Farm & Steading my answer was "absolutely".  Never mind that I didn't know what a bicycle powered performance was and had no idea where Burmiston was.  The element of the unknown just made it that much more of an adventure.

Prior to the event I was starting to feel a little bit stressed.  My girlfriend was to accompany me to the play but I had cooked for her the night before and now for some unrelated reason she was feeling a little bit under the weather.  Ah well, as the character Lysander observes in this very play, "The course of true love did never run smooth".  Due to my legendarily wonky sense of direction I turned up to Burmieston 10 minutes late and a little bit frazzled.  However I was greeted by friendly faces, a cup of Yorkshire tea and a delicious slice of a heart shaped lemon drizzle cake.  I've never met a piece of cake I didn't like but this one I really, really liked!

I made my way over to a beautiful barn as the venue had been moved indoors due to the vagaries of the Scottish weather and took my seat and the theatre group known as The Handlebards took the stage.  They explained that due to their only being four of them and Midsummer... having an abundance of roles that they would be each playing multiple parts and employing the use of costumes, puppetry and even audience members.  To continue the bicycle theme when an actor changed roles he would indicate this by sounding a bike bell to avoid confusion.  After a couple of minutes of this it is amazing how well this system works, the different accents, mannerisms, quick changes and racous sense of humour give the impression of a much bigger production.  Talk about bang for your buck!

The younger kids seemed to get a kick out of the humour, movement and singing.The sheer logistics and practice that must be involved in making this all seem so natural genuinely astounded me and really made it stand out from other productions I have seen.  This approach also seemed to go down amazingly well with the audience that included families with children that ranged from about one years old to teenagers.  The younger kids seemed to get a real kick out of the humour, movement and even singing and although they may not necessarily  have understood everything that was going on they remained thoroughly entertained and fidgeting was at what most have been record shatteringly low levels.  It really was quite heartening to see theatre made so accessible and enthralling to the younger generation.

Having arrived to late to grab a program my note taking was suffering as a result.  Being unsure of the actors names I refered to them as young Joseph Gordon Levitt(Paul Moss), Adam Buxton guy(Mathew Seager), green socks guy(Tom Dixon) and David Tennantish man(Calum Hughes-McIntosh), so it was good to catch up with them at the interval and get a note of their real names.

The second half was just as entertaining as the first and I began to notice nice little touches like Bottom's donkey head was made with a cycle helmet and seat with bike tyres for the ears.  Also when it came to the play within the play we were treated to a nice bit of audience participation with various people assigned parts and directed by The Handlebards.  Burmieston owner Olly was particularly fetching in a nice dress finished off with a red cup bra.  All in all it was a very unusual, entertaining and slightly surreal experience leaving me wondering if "I have but slumbered here while the visions did appear"

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Burmieston Farm and Steading and Steading also run festive workshops.  Read more about them here>>>