On the evening of April 17, “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, a classic comedy written by William Shakespeare, was staged by TNT Theatre at Beihang Sunrise Concert Hall.
As the treasures of western literature, Shakespeare’s plays have charmed generations of readers for over four-hundred years. “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, the play performed at Beihang this time, is one of his most successful comedies. It portrays a series of events revolving around the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazon queen, Hippolyta, including the emotional entanglements of four young Athenian lovers, a play by six amateur actors in celebration of the wedding, the quarrel between the king and the queen of the fairies, and the crisscross relationships among these groups of characters.
In their British-style performance, TNT Theatre aimed to add weight to the comedy by expressing various themes through the characters, integrating drama, music, dance and chorus. The actors and actresses impressed the audience with their exquisite performance, rich body language, vivid comedy language and stirring drama conflicts, showing the joy, pain and lunacy of love. They endowed the fairies, heroes and mythological figures in Shakespeare’s works with the free spirit and great vitality of TNT performances, and their creative addition of Chinese words also won rounds of applause from the audience in this wonderful night. What enchanted the Chinese audience, according to the comment by the media, are “the ingenious imagination contained in the concise but not simple design, the pure British style and the strong dramatic impact”.
Founded in 1980, TNT Theatre is a world-class international touring theatre winning many prizes. It is not only a prestigious theatre in Britain but also the most popular English theatre that takes the lead in the number of tours and the countries covered, dominating the market of English drama in Germany and staging most performances in France, Japan and Russia. The theatre is an exponent of sparking the imagination of the audience and enables them to be participators rather than onlookers. It integrates several art forms into the plays and invites top composers to tailor music for every play, featuring strong elements of music and dance in its performances. Since 2000, it has staged a series of Shakespeare’s works, including “Hamlet”, “Macbeth”, “A Midsummer Night's Dream”, “Romeo and Juliet”, “The Taming of the Shrew” and so on, which have been put on stage over a thousand times in more than 30 countries.
Reported and edited by Song Chao
Translated by Li Mingzhu
