A Midsummer Night’s Dream

“And yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays.”

Deep in an enchanted forest, four young lovers on the run lose their way and become entangled in the war between the king and queen of the fairies – along with a troupe of unsuspecting craftsmen putting on a play. Moonlight and dew, mixed with the fairies’ mind-bending magic potion, turn everything upside down on this fateful midsummer night.

The play seems light and simple on the surface, but underneath it is layered and daring. That is exactly why we return to Shakespeare again and again – not just because his plays are ‘classics’, but because they raise questions about human nature that we are still trying to answer 430 years later. In A Midsummer Night’s Dream the dreamlike and nightmarish sides of love collide: longing and jealousy, oppression and submission, control and abandon. In one summer night we travel from the confines of the city into the freedom of wild nature, from hatred to love, from sleep to waking.

A company of twelve young and newly graduated actors and dancers took on the best-loved comedy of all time. María led the creative process together with Magnús Thorlacius and Eyja Sigríður Gunnlaugsdóttir as a directing team. With no funding behind the production, the artists themselves made it happen through their own work. The staging was simple, with all the emphasis on the text and the ensemble.

The response was tremendous: the production closed to full houses after eleven performances, a record for Tjarnarbíó.

Special thanks: Ólafur Kristinn, Hólmfríður Hafliðadóttir, Kristinn Óli Haraldsson, Tómas J. Þorsteinsson, Tóma rýmið, Te og kaffi, Eykt, Topplagnir and Orri Hauksson.