Turning a Shakespeare classic into a contemporary Kiwi comedy makes for a lot of fun at The Court Theatre.
Characters from one of Shakespeare’s most loved plays go for a walk in the woods and end up in modern-day New Zealand – that’s the unlikely premise for Lysander’s Aunty, the next production at The Court Theatre.
Lysander is one of four lovers in the Shakespeare play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. His aunt gets only a fleeting mention at the start of the play as being someone who can help Lysander and his lover Hermia elope. They set off to find her but are immediately distracted from this quest and the aunt is never mentioned again.
For writer Ralph McCubbin Howell, filling in the aunt’s story was too great a temptation. Who is this law-snubbing, free-loving aunty? Why is she living remotely in the woods? And what’s she doing helping runaway lovers elope? In coming up with answers, he has created a gleefully anachronistic romp about an under-used character in a 400-year-old play that is also a rage-filled reaction to the here and now.
Co-directors Hannah Smith and Dan Bain have brought the ambitious script to life on The Court’s stage. For Hannah, the play is about a clash of worlds – “highbrow and low, verse and prose, haves and have-nots, yes-men and no-ladies”.
For Dan, one of the most exciting aspects of the production is the cast. “I have been ruthless in my pursuit of a cast that can play the comedy of this, and I’m so stoked with where we've ended up. There's no one in that cast that cannot land a joke.”
There are also some tricky sequences to be staged, and Dan and the team are having fun working these out. Everyone involved loves the resources that come with a Court production. Hannah takes her hat off to them for never suggesting the concept be scaled back.
And what does she want audiences to get from the production? “Lysander’s Aunty is a comedy, but it is all a blistering takedown of the most selfish and wilfully ignorant aspects of our culture. So, if audiences could walk away both laughing and also inspired to change the world, that would be great thanks!”