A Midsummer's Night Dream

A dream set in and about the Barbican Theatre in London, and a performance of  'A Midsummer's Night Dream'. The dream started with some work flavoured scenes, of which all I can now remember is that they were not much to do with any work that I have ever actually done.

My ticket had been carried over from the previous year, was more or less incomprehensible, so I knew neither start time nor seat number, and was jammed in with a whole lot of bits and pieces of paper in the inside breast pocket of my jacket.

I don't seem to know the area very well, managing to get rather lost. But getting warm and thinking I have plenty of time, I stop in a fashionable city bar to take refreshment. I am rather put out that a large glass of white wine costs me £25, but it turns out to be very good wine, most unusually so for a public house. And thinking about it now, not such an unreasonable price for a third of a bottle by restaurant standards, where the markup on wine is huge.

Eventually find my way to the corridors of the busy theatre. I keep bumping into ladies that I know slightly. Waking, not actual ladies, nor ladies that I actually know, from previous dreams or otherwise, although I do associate to the sort of people who used to work for the Government Social Survey in the 1970's. People who were apt to talk a lot, to read the Guardian and to live in Clerkenwell or Islington. But still in a muddle about start time and seat number.

The show starts and I seem to be in the corridor running down the outside of the wrong side of the Greek-style, raked auditorium. I persuade a doorman to let me in anyway, to find the aisles inside full of people milling around and people sitting around, not paying much if any attention to the proceedings. A large auditorium, about the same size and shape as that of the theatre at the Barbican, but very different in detail.

Proceedings which take the form of a series of musical numbers, with long gaps between the numbers. More milling around.

Eventually, in one of the gaps, I make my way to my seat, a very good seat quite near the front, but on the other side.

My seat is empty but occupied (as it were), so on the suggestion of the gentleman in the row behind, I sit down in the one next to it. Very fancy seats, a bit like those in an aeroplane or, for that matter, the Epsom Odeon deluxe seats, installed a few years ago. The lady returns and seems to know me. Very talkative anyway.

Much action up front, but nobody is paying much attention. Much clowning around, on and off stage.

I find my trousers covered with jets of brightly coloured sticky stuff; the sort of thing you might squirt on a child's birthday cake from an icing bag - or from a large tube of toothpaste for teeth or paint for an artist. The lady adds some more for good measure. All very tiresome as I am due back at the office later.

At which point I wake up.

References

Reference 1: https://www.blogtorwho.com/the-dream-qa-highlights/. The source of the snap above. 'Earlier this month [in 2016] BAFTA Cyrmu held a screening of BBC’s newest version of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  Russell T Davies reunited with BBC Cymru Wales to deliver a modern, magical take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream, one that is likely to delight and challenge all who love the work of William Shakespeare'. A show that we managed to miss.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/a-dream-for-third-millennium.html. The last performance of the play that we went to. I don't think we have ever seen it at the Barbican and I can't find any trace of the circus version from Iceland that we saw at the Young Vic. From which, inter alia, I remember an acrobatic lady with a hole in her black tights. While all that Bing wants to tell me about is a modern dress version in mud from 2017. Quite different.