1920's Walking Around In A Dream

A fun premise, but too much slapstick and telegraphing of ‘look how funny I am’ for my taste. The lyrics were mostly unintelligible due to the loudness of the recorded accompaniment.

this was pretty good! the challenge was the cast really needed to be miked or the sound needed to be turned down or both. The characters and costumes were great .the 2 pairs of lovers were really very good! - strong acting and singing.great slapsrick. the script uses a lot of 1920's jargon that is sometimes unclear but shakespeare did it in his day too . sets were fun and the sequences were really seemless. well done.

Okay, so the show could benefit from a bit more polish, but if you love Fringe then you know that you need to make some allowances. Like when a show set in the 1920’s makes such liberal use of slang from the time that it struggles to communicate with a modern audience. Or when the sound balance is not quite right and the music overpowers the singers’ voices. But in this case the excellent performance of physical comedy in the latter part of the play makes up for the slow start.

I really enjoyed the final result regardless, but I would love to see a more developed version of this show someday.

It's a Midsummer Night's Dream, minus the fairies & mechanicals, adding musical numbers, Prohibition bootleggers, & magical hooch. The show's bogged down initially by every 20's slang phrase ever uttered, but it improves w/ the lovers' forest antics, especially Gareth Finnigan's Andy.

Lookin for some dames and gigglewater? Look no further than Tom Theseus' speakeasy in "1920's Walking Around in a Dream"! with plenty of 1920's slang and a fun adaptation of the Bard, this is the elephant's eyebrows!

You can read my full review below!

Liked this brave show a lot. Adapting the Midsummer Night's Dream story to the 1920s is fun and playful, giving this musical team lots of scope to create their story. It's a work in progress, as the program acknowledges, and has some rough spots, but the overall enthusiasm and commitment of the cast shines through. Gareth Finnigan as Andy (Lysander) is an absolute treat as singer and physical comedian. The backing music was a bit too loud to hear some of the song lyrics, and the singing is perhaps a bit underrehearsed. But overall it's fun and well worth checking out.

Transplanting Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to roaring 1920s Chicago and turning it into a musical featuring American standards with new lyrics sounds promising. But much of Natalie Kaye’s adaptation — which features speakeasies, boxing rings and mysterious flasks of moonshine — feels nonsensical.

Click the link above to read Glenn Sumi's full review in the Toronto Star.

From Alessandro Stracuzzi, Contributing writer to OUR THEATRE VOICE and his review of 1920’S WALKING AROUND IN A DREAM.

(Frothy.) The word amateur comes from the Latin amator, meaning “lover.” So when I call this an amateur production, I mean it in the tenderest sense of the word: far from refined, yet wearing its love of theatre proudly on its sleeve. Playwright Natalie Kaye transplants A Midsummer Night’s Dream to jazz-age Chicago, giving Shakespeare’s comedy a brassy, Roaring Twenties makeover. The result has a rough-around-the-edges charm.

Under Declan Meagher’s direction, actors dance the Charleston and shimmy their shoulders with undefeated energy. Cumbersome scene changes and broad slapstick become part of the evening’s homespun appeal. The concept also allows for some enjoyably cheeky reinventions. Kimberly Van Vo’s Hermia sashays onstage in a scarlet, rhinestone-studded dress, while Daytoni Raye’s moustachioed Dimitri – the production’s Demetrius – is imagined as a prizefighter. The evening’s laurels, however, go to Gareth Finnigan. He brings warmth and comic timing to Andy, the production’s Lysander, especially during “Satisfy,” a playful number in which he worries he is too inexperienced to please his lover. The reinvention exudes wit, transporting us to a sparkling age of Prohibition. But in defiance of the law, everyone here seems to carry a hip flask, taking the occasional swig to survive their romantic entanglements. As it turns out, booze makes a perfectly good substitute for Shakespeare’s love potion.