Bell Shakespeare is Australia’s national theatre company dedicated to performing the works of the Bard and his contemporaries. Their productions are varied in approach – they’ve set Henry V in a bunker during the London Blitz and placed The Comedy of Errors in a disco-driven 1970s – and the company has transformed some of the world’s most famous plays by applying new genres, tones and styles. However, in its 32 years, the company has never produced a musical – until now.
At first glance, The Lovers feels like a perfect fit for Bell. Written and composed by Laura Murphy, the musical is based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Subplots and characters have been trimmed down to focus on the play’s four young lovers, who are enchanted into romantic misadventure. Oberon and Puck, the only two other characters who remain from the original text, are styled here as fairies who love to spark love as much as Cupid does. But the essence of the original work remains alive and well. Murphy has even retained the play’s Elizabethan-era dialogue, up to a point: when the music starts, we hear the characters’ inner voices using contemporary cadences and expressions; when they sing, they speak the language of pop music.
