A new theater production in Manchester is reimagining Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream—with a drum & bass twist.
The play from award-winning director Stef O’Driscoll will debut at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre next month and is said to honor the British city’s “synonymous links with dance, music and rave culture,” according to its synopsis.
Adding “sweaty dance-offs and drum and bass love anthems” to Shakespeare’s over 400-year-old comedy, O’Driscoll’s reinterpretation is set in modern-day Manchester instead of Athens. The Palace of Theseus is now a nightclub of the same name, where four young lovestruck ravers settle their quarrels with dance battles.
Rising Manchester-based producer-vocalist SALO, fresh from a main stage performance at the city’s famous Parklife festival in June, will soundtrack the production and assume the role of the Moon, the goddess of music who oversees the “hedonistic” world of O’Driscoll’s creation.
The play is inspired by O’Driscoll’s own personal connection to Manchester’s drum & bass scene, forged over a lifetime of dancefloor memories that the director says reflect the themes of love, loss, jealousy, and betrayal in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“My relationship with Manchester has always been through its beautiful rave scene, mainly drum and bass and jungle music,” O’Driscoll said in a statement. “I’ve had some of the best nights out here in Manchester, with the music of talented local artists serving as the soundtrack through messy heartaches, painful unrequited love to that new fizzy kind of love.”
“Blending the worlds of Shakespeare and Manchester’s current rave scene, I wanted to celebrate that music in this production and highlight Manchester’s many gifted artists, rappers, and MCs alongside Shakespeare,” she continued.
Last summer, a theater production in Detroit also reimagined Shakespeare with a dance music lens, merging the city’s rich techno history with the story of Prospero from The Tempest.
Stef O’Driscoll’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream will run at Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre from September 10 to October 12. Tickets are now available here.
Featured image from Unsplash.com.
