Oberon is played by a woman, there's a chorus of male fairies and the whole show is set in a nightclub. Welcome to The Donkey Show, Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night's Dream played as - and in - a Seventies disco.
"It's nothing like any Shakespeare that you've ever seen before," says Simon Friend, one of a trio of young Jewish producers putting on the show at Camden Proud. They opted to revive the show, a 1999 hit that played off-Broadway for six years, in part because of the Shakespeare 400 celebrations this year. "Although in fact there's not a great deal of Shakespeare's text. One critic called it A Donna Summers' Night's Dream."
The show features a string of seventies' disco hits, including I Will Survive, We Are Family, You Sexy Thing, Carwash and Don't Leave Me This Way.
The show was written in 1999 by Randy Weiner, a Jewish graduate of Harvard who was all set to become a doctor until he wrote a hip-hop version of Twelfth Night which kick-started a career in show business. Since then he's become known for blending nightclub culture and experimental theatre.
"You need to have a few drinks beforehand," advises Simon Friend.
You need to have a drink before the show
"It's a deceptively simple show. There's a lot of music, and you're up on your feet partying. You are at the centre of the party. It's all happening around you."
He thinks interactive theatre particularly appeals to young people. "On the whole people in their twenties do not go to the theatre. In this age of everything being interactive, this is a show which appeals. The audience feels involved."
This production is directed by Ryan Mcbryde who has found surprising links between the bard and seventies disco culture.
"There's a dark undercurrent running through the story highlighting the latent misogyny of disco culture of the 1970s as well as in the bard's source material.
Hence, our gender bending company. In stark contrast to Elizabethan ladies not being able to perform on stage all our principal roles –- male and female - are played by women with the notable exception of Lady Puck, a dark, delirious, disco drag-queen.
"Tytania's fairies are all male acrobatic acolytes hell-bent on having fun. Under the twinkling lights of the ever turning mirror ball, the highs and lows of our young lovers are played out in and around our audience in the immersive theatre tradition. It's a celebration of love in all capricious glory; it's raw, it's infectious, and most importantly it's pure A Grade fun."
For Simon Friend and colleagues Jacob Wagen, Adam Paulden and Oli Sones, the hope is that The Donkey Show gains the same word-of-mouth acclaim as previous production Bad Jews.
"That's when you know you're successful, when people start spreading the word. And of course the Jewish community is particularly good at that."
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