Ok, Midsummer's night is over but the Summer dream still proceeds. Rather a daze in this never ending heat.
The lovely and entertaining play was shown in the little theatre and the actors of the Panicale drama school made a amusing and incredibly professional interpretation of the Shakespearean comedy. A clear illustration of the madness of love and its dream-like quality, the play brings me to the general feeling of reverie and insanity which seem to emerge in theatre like situations on the great stage of Piazza Umberto.
Dreams, love and heat – the three woven the one into the other... trite words spoken with the sincerity of love through the foggy eyes of passion. Panicale with its smiles and its lunatic laughs, a dream of a town under the cruel heat of Father Sun.
The characters in the play claim the greatest of love yet their shallow words show their true natures which are interchangeable with their petty emotions. Betrayals and heartache... all here in the theatre town of Panicale...
The main characters of the hamlet, play their part entertaining us others... we, who then play our part in the artisans' play of Pyramus and Thisbe's tragic love story – a silly interpretation of what never was. And what is?
In our Summer frenzy the curtains barely close and our roles are “played” fervently to the end. With the end of Summer the town will awaken to reality and it will be interesting to see who like Demetrius, remains unchanged... who will detain that maddening flame under the right-way-to-be appearance in the coolness of the season to come.
And in midst of all this confusion, the fairy folk make their grand appearance - Oberon, king of the fairies, who lives in the woods, has quarreled with his queen, Titania and for this reason he decides to call for mischievous Puck and to play a trick on her, wetting her eyes with magic flower juice, which induces her to temporarily fall in love with Bottom, one of the artisan players, with the head of an ass....
And how many infatuations has the flower juice, nectar of the heat, cast over our special actors of Panicale? Who has become possessed? Who obsessed? Who has managed to dodge the enchantment? No-one I fear...
But all ends well, the foolish replace their mask of sanity, lovers are reunited to those they should be reunited to, the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta is a grand ordeal and a great success. So what else matters in this stage of Folly?