Dream run for te reo - Pop-up Globe's dreamy line-up

Shakespeare’s fairies won’t be lost in translation, writes Dionne Christian.

Object to Guyon Espiner speaking te reo on Radio New Zealand?

Then for Pete's sake — or should that be Don's? — keep away from Pop-up Globe's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Whereas its writer, William Shakespeare, might be regarded as English as tweed, PuG is a theatre company firmly rooted in Aotearoa New Zealand.

That's why Shakespeare's romantic comedy, written in 1595/96, has received a makeover and some of its most popular characters — Oberon, Titania, Puck and the rest of the fairies — are played as te reo-speaking patupaiarehe (elusive fairy folk found on mountaintops and in forests).

Before the protests mount, mull over the point made by PuG's artistic director and seasoned Shakespeare scholar Dr Miles Gregory.

"We often think of Shakespeare as being a dead white man and his plays about dead white people but that isn't the case at all," says Gregory. "Shakespeare constantly presents other cultures — non-English cultures and I mean, the fairies themselves are not English to begin with — whether it's in Othello or the Merchant of Venice or Romeo and Juliet — because almost all of his plays are about cultures meeting."

Given the time in which Shakespeare lived and worked, it makes sense. The discovery and pillaging of the so-called New World — the Americas — was well underway in Elizabethan England; drawings from European voyages of discovery were widely circulated in London.

So, while others were mapping the land, classifying people, flora and fauna and being bedazzled by the resources they found, Shakespeare was exploring what happens when groups of strangers meet and attempt to find common ground. Or not.

"When cultures meet, it can be destructive but out of that force, often very creative things can happen," says Gregory. "I think New Zealanders watching A Midsummer Night's Dream will find themselves thinking about New Zealand's own story of cultures intersecting."

There is a precedent. In 2012, a full te reo version of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida performed at the NZ Festival before travelling to play at London's Globe Theatre. As Gregory says, what PuG is doing isn't "non-Shakespearean" at all but a contemporary extension of Shakespeare's original ideas and A Midsummer Night's Dream is the perfect play in which to expand those ideas.

Jason Te Kere, as Oberon, and Reuben Butler,as Puck, star in Pop-up Globe's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The story goes that Theseus, the Duke of Athens, in marrying Hippolyta, the former queen of the Amazons, and all the court is preparing for the nuptials (given news of Prince Harry's engagement to US actress Meghan Markle, it already sounds more relevant). Caught up in the joyous ferment, four Athenian lovers make plans to satisfy their hearts' desires and these plans take them into the forest surrounding Athens.

A band of fairies, led by King Oberon and Queen Titania, has also journeyed to those forests as has a group of six tradespeople, called Mechanicals in Shakespeare's time. The latter have decided to honour Theseus and Hippolyta by performing a play for them and take to the surrounding forest to rehearse. The lovers and the tradespeople are then caught up in a fairy plot that sees them manipulated in ways designed to make an audience roar with laughter as things rapidly get confused.

Gregory says dealing with the supernatural elements in Dream is a challenge for anyone staging the play. He started with the fact that the fairies are alien to Athenians, who are wary of the fairies powers and scared by the ways in which they may be transformed by them.

Gregory has long wanted to incorporate tikanga Maori into Shakespeare and this is the first opportunity he's had to do so, but it had to do be done with care and integrity. It means the production crew includes cultural advisers such as Te Kohe Tuhaka, who starred in PuG's Othello and is associate director on Dreams; traditional music consultant Ani-Piki Tuari and traditional fight director Beez Te Waati.

Fibre artist and designer Shona Tawhiao, whose work has been dubbed "harakeke couture", has created the patupaiarehe costumes. Her work has been shown all over the world and, in 2016, she had a three-week residency at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Gregory and Tuhaka emphasise that they're not making a History Channel documentary where pre-European New Zealand is presented on stage. Their forest has donkeys, stags and oak trees; the Athenian court is circa 1614 and it's a brutal regime where if the mechanicals — played as Australasian tradies working for a scaffolding company called Sweet-Ass — get it wrong, they could be executed.

The cultures are completely alien to one another and that, says Gregory, is what Dream is about: exploring the fear of the other. "The play is also about the integration between different cultures and all of the characters go on a journey through the play. At the end, the court of Thesis has been influenced by its contact with the creatures of the forest, with the Maori culture of the forest."

Tuhaka says he wouldn't have wanted to be involved had he doubted that respect and integrity were part of the process.

"For me, personally, it's not about getting it right because you're never, ever going to get it right — it's about the process, about honouring the processes so that you can eliminate the fear of offence, of offending anyone because, nobody wants to — regardless of the culture — offend.

"I am interested in it from a perspective where the whole company, cast included, is allowed to be anchored in the traditions, anchored in the stories and the reasons for doing what we're doing are clear. It's the same way I felt when I was part of PuG as an actor; everything was anchored in the knowledge of Shakespeare, the beauty of and the history of it, the history of the theatre itself and the knowledge that all the directors brought.

"For me, it's about having a good balance of that as we explore the culture.

"And I actually think Miles is more Maori than even Miles knows."

Lowdown

What: Pop-up Globe
Where and when: Ellerslie Racecourse, until March.

Also popping up

Julius Caesar , from January 11: "The world's greatest empire is compromised when a faction of the senators of Rome can no longer tolerate the excesses of their wildly popular but wildly unpredictable leader." PuG uses a predominantly female cast, directed by Rita Stone, to tell the story. A response to criticism that it hasn't used enough women in its plays? No, Gregory has said, the company has been so successful it can experiment a bit more.

The Merchant of Venice, from January 12: The all-male Buckingham's Company returns to take on what was originally billed as a comedy. Gregory says in a post-holocaust world, it's very rarely performed that way and has come to be regarded as one Shakespeare's "problem plays".

"One of the great things about the Merchant of Venus is that you're struck by how much of the play has seeped into everyday language; it is a play peppered with famous quotations made famous by the play ... " Peter Daube plays Shylock.

Macbeth, from February 5: "Honoured for his heroic exploits defending Scotland from invasion and rebellion, Macbeth's world is overturned when three witches prophesy that, among his future fortunes, he will one day become king." A full cast for the mixed Southampton Company is yet to be announced but former Shortland Street star Amanda Billing will play Lady Macbeth.

The Comedy of Errors, from February 19: Also presented by the Southampton Company, the farce brings together two sets of twins in what's described as a wild romp with a side-splitting finale. Gregory says it's about people out of their home country being subject to another country's laws and customs.

And there's more: Want to see Shakespeare under the stars in purpose-built amphitheatre? Shakespeare in the Park is back at the PumpHouse in Takapuna, with Romeo and Juliet and The Comedy of Errors on alternating nights.