A Midsummer Night's Dreaming / Dreaming Under the Southern Bough

Shakespeare wasn’t the only playwright to die in 1616. This year also marks the 400^th anniversary of the death of Chinese writer Tang Xianzu. Themed around both men’s musings on dreams, this production—an international collaboration—is a double-bill based on their work, adapted and performed by the universities of Leeds and of International Business and Economics (UIBE) in China.

Director Li Jun’s take on A Midsummer Night’s Dream for UIBE transposes the lost lovers in the forest into a hotel, Sophora (so-called because of its links to Chinese legends), run by three spirits who treat their oblivious human guests as experiments. The relative merits of love versus reason are the catalyst for a colourful, if uneven, spin on the tale with some clunky gender politics.

Meanwhile, for Leeds, director Steven Ansell and co-adaptor Adam Strickson take Tang’s Dreaming Under the Southern Bough and embed its kingdom of ants ruled by the human Chunyu in a modern-dress landscape of post-war trauma and guilt. The zen philosophising on the dangers of ego and the importance of perspective is delivered with lumpish earnestness, but leavened by welcome flashes of humour.

Of the two productions, Li Jun’s is the most vivid, although hampered by some uneven performances and awkward pacing. But what it lacks in finesse, it makes up for in vision; there’s an impish charm to its crazier edges that feels fitting for its source. Nonetheless, it’s still refreshing to see Tang tackled on these shores, when the Fringe hardly lacks Shakespeare.