Galleries & Reviews
Brighton Festival 2003
Festival Events:
A Midsummer Night's Dream | Bright FX : Ignite | Foreign Aids | Show Your Hands | Streets of Brighton | The Chinese State Circus | The Depot : Drive-in Gallery | The James Taylor Quartet | The Ladyboys of Bangkok
A Midsummer Night's Dream
I do like Shakespeare. And I have read A Midsummer Night's Dream, seen it performed and even seen a film version of it, all which I enjoyed. But nothing came close to this. Oskaras Koršunovas Theatre, a Lithuanian company really made this their own. It was a fantastic display of Shakespeare with a different perspective. Performed in Lithuanian dialogue with English surtitles on a light board above the stage, these actors invented an athletic, tongue in cheek show with a twist. The costumes were simple and subtle with hardly any attention drawn to them, and the only props used on stage were wooden boards that served various functions, both visual and auditive.
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With the help of their tour leader translating, we managed to chat to some of the actors after the show.
Here are a few facts on Oskaras Koršunovas:
This is their first time in the UK (although they have performed MSND 30 times across Europe to date), and said that they were a little afraid of performing here, in, as they call it, Shakespeare Country. They however have definitely proved themselves with everyone in the audience thoroughly enjoying the performance. Due to the fact that they’ve done it so many times, they often improvise and add little bits and jokes into the performance to amuse themselves. (We picked up on a few instances!) The theatre group consist of mainly the same people who all work together on the same productions.
Try to catch them throughout Europe over the next few months – definitely a must!
(Oskaras Koršunovas is also the theatrical company behind Fire Face, and was awarded the New Theatrical Reality Prize from the European Jury of Taormina in 2001.)
~ Review written by Pieter Meiring. Photos by Olivia Meiring.