In the heat of the shortest night of the year, young lovers and work-a-day dreamers plunge into a world between sleep and waking, where "everything seems double" in the ultimate expression of Shakespeare's theatrical trickery, A Midsummer Night's Dream, showing at The Joan on June 14 and 15.
The tale follows four Athenian youths as they find themselves lost in a forest under the watchful eye of the fairy King, whose thirst for mischief leads to a series of trials, tribulations and trickery that will unhinge the different relationships between the four unsuspecting mortals - only to reward their suffering with new insight and deserved happiness - and many a laugh along the way.
One of Shakespeare's truly essential works, A Midsummer Night's Dream, like every fairy-story, warns us that family, love and friendship are fragile - when parents are selfish, their children break the rules; when love rears its head, friendships are forgotten; and that's just the mortal world.
Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is perhaps the best possible introduction young people can have to the theatre and among the most powerful visions of growing up ever written; moving and full of extraordinary imagination.
This Sport for Jove production is Shakespeare as you've never seen it before.
On June 14 at 7.30pm and June 15 at 2pm and 7.30pm. Tickets $45|$40, under 30s $30, family $120, seniors matinee $30. Available at www.thejoan.com.au, on 4723 7600 or at the box office, 597 High Street, Penrith.