The Popular Mechanicals

Date/Time
Date(s) - 4 Nov 2017
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Location
Canberra Theatre Centre Playhouse


GoTheatrical! simultaneous open and app captioned performance of ‘The Popular Mechanicals’ on Saturday, 4 November 2017 at 2pm

Booking Details: https://canberratheatrecentre.com.au/show/popular-mechanicals/

If you would like to use the open captioning, on large LCD screens located at either side of the stage, please don’t forget to let ticketing staff know at the time of booking your tickets that you require seat/s with a good view of the captioning screen and the stage.

If you would like to use captioning via our app, please ensure you have downloaded our GoTheatrical! app from either The App Store or GooglePlay prior to the performance.  If you don’t have your own mobile/tablet device, the theatre has a limited number of devices available to borrow from the cloak room.  These are given out on a first come, first served basis, so make sure you early arrive as these devices go fast! 🙂

About the Production:

A FUNNY THING HAPPENED TO ME ON THE WAY TO THE THEATRE THIS EVENING 

Shakespeare’s greatest clowns—the rude mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream— take centre-stage in this wild reimagining of what might have happened off-stage during the Bard’s most loved comedy. Perhaps the most famous group of amateur thespians of all time, the cast of the play-within-a-play Pyramus and Thisbe, bumble their way through rehearsals, misadventures and sheer idiocy in an hysterically funny mix of verse, song and dance.

Using snippets of the existing text of A Midsummer Night’s Dream along with a gloriously cod version of Shakespearean English, the play exalts in its own roughness, extravagance of expression and frequent obscenity—in the nicest possible way.

Clowning, vaudeville, slapstick, farce, stand-up comedy and bad puppetry come together with both witty badinage and fart jokes to create an anarchic and thrillingly unhinged carnival that revels in its own theatricality.

First directed by Geoffrey Rush in 1987, The Popular Mechanicals holds a special place in the Australian comedic canon and is ripe for revival with a cast of our best theatrical clowns and directed by former Sydney Theatre Company Resident Director Sarah Giles. A perfect romp that promises to lift the roof in the silliest ways imaginable.

“As beautiful as it is silly” The Advertiser

 

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