The Manchester Shakespeare Company is performing ‘Summer Dreaming the Musical’ – a modern adaptation of a Shakespeare classic.
To celebrate 400 years since the Bard’s First Folio, MSC is producing its first post-lockdown production – a musical comedy version of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, with a Mancunian twist.
The First Folio is a collection of Shakespeare’s plays published in 1623 which is considered by some to be one of the most influential books ever.
And writer John Topliff and director Gina Frost wanted to make it more current for 2023.
John said: “With Shakespeare in school, the language is the problem, we wanted to contextualise it.”
The play is set in the 70s in the forests around the ‘City of Mancia’ and ‘follows the lives of four very different couples as they struggle to make the course of true love run smooth’.
With hippies, Marxists, arranged marriages, the rise of feminism, drag and plenty of adult humour, it seems like this play could be a perfect blend of chaotic harmony.
Summer Dreaming – the Musical will run from 19-23 April at the Empty Space Theatre.
Tickets are on sale at the Manchester Shakespeare Company website here.
Main image courtesy of Manchester Shakespeare Company
