The Kaos Dream
28 07 07 - 10:16 Category: default.
The KAOS MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM is a raunchy, physical fuelled, surreal, sexy Shakespearean spectacle. A dazzling dream. A dreamers dream. A beddable dream. A playful dream. A saucy dream. A devilish dream. A stunning Dream. A radical Dream. A fantastic dream. The KAOS Dream. Don't be an ass and miss out!
WOW! Just got back from a performance of ‘The Kaos Dream’ at the Poole Lighthouse, and thought it was a fabulous take on the original. And so Brechtian as well. I’m a year 13 technical theatre studies student, and went with a group of friends on the theatre course. We now have to write the performance up and draw diagrams! Ummm…not sure where to start with those!
Cheers for a great night out!
Ed
Edmund Rogers - 20 09 07 - 22:29
Saw Dream Fri night in Norwich. Superb! Best Dream ever, and just incredible energy & talent from the players. Thanks! Look forward to seeing you again.
Rachel Henderson - 22 10 07 - 13:51
i just have to say wow. what an amazing performance. i went to see it at the norwich playhouse and i just laughed constantly. you certainly make shakespeare for teenagers coz i absolutley loved it. great show lads and ladettes.
Thanks
Neil Robertson - 02 11 07 - 09:09
i went last month to see the production of the kaos dream at the theatre royal winchester, i went expecting high hopes of the show with its raunchy theme!! however i was disgusted with the context of the play, i found the sexual nature far to unpleasant to watch. i thought the social issues dealt with in the production were spot on. but were shown in a vulger and uneccssary way!
nathan - 10 11 07 - 18:55
Went to see Dream this evening at Harrogate Theatre and it was the funniest, sexiest, best and most disturbing adaptation I’ve ever seen! I also laughed almost constantly for the whole show and when Bottom stood up… Dear me!! xD! Fantastic show! Good work guys! :D
Joel - 05 02 08 - 21:36
where to a start? what an amazing dream! im a year thirteen drama student and a group of us went to see you in harrogate and were absolutely stunned! thanks for the wink, guy in the thong(s) loved your corset :p but yeah, now have to go write notes on it for my exam (hmmm) but thankyou for a version of the dream that kept me laughing and awed all the way through! congratulations on such a creative, modern piece!!!!
sarah (Email) - 06 02 08 - 21:57
I had high hopes for the play and it’s contempary direction however, although there were good and well devised aspects, i found the general content vulgar and somewhat of a mockery.
laura - 07 02 08 - 18:50
Just reading the comments below I am delighted that Theatre and a play written some 400 years ago is still able to provoke reaction and debate. My Understanding is that Midsummer Nights Dream is about SEX and therefore if you go to it assuming it to be something other than this then you will be dissappointed. Congratulations to Kaos again for their bravery and integrity in approaching the play in this way.
Karl - 18 02 08 - 13:39
saw your Dream at The Round in Newcastle, Saturday night 16th Feb. Fantastic! The funniest MSD I have ever seen. Inspired, consistant thematically. So funny! The performances were absolutely superb, so full of energy, precision and intelligence. Thought the whole thread about sexual obsession, power and manipulation was brilliantly brought to life and more!
Carol (Email) - 18 02 08 - 19:05
I just saw the Dream in Lincoln, rather taken aback. Absolutely fantastic!
Oli Rushby (Email) - 18 02 08 - 21:22
The Kaos Dream in the Lincoln Drill Hall was excellent. A wonderful mix of dark emotion and humour.
Keith - 19 02 08 - 16:51
I saw the dream in Newcastle’s round theatre. Just completely inpirational and galvanising to see a handful of actors and tech guys play such a storm. I instantly recommended this show and any in the future to my friends and was so dismayed to find this is their last show. Kaos are an absolute gem of a theatre company and it is an absolute travesty that their funding has been cut so we can have the fucking olympics.
Derek - 20 02 08 - 22:32
Krap
Attrocious
Obscene
Shit
Friday night’s performance was the bigggest abombination in the history of contemporary Shakespearian adaptations. The sexual content was not shocking but merely immature and unnecessary. As year 13 drama students we felt that “Kaos” were patronising us by suggesting that we could not appreciate Shakespeare in its original context.
Kaos’ production destroyed the beauty and subtlety of Shakespeare’s work, completely veering from the original intention of the piece.
We feel insulted that “Kaos” are getting paid to provide this type of “entertainment” when our own amateur production of the piece is to a far more professional standard.
Shakespeare must be spinning in his grave.
P.S. No wonder you’ve suffered a cut in your fundings. Frankly we second this motion.
P.P.S. Our mispelling of “crap” was inspired by Kaos themselves.
Very “Brechtian”...
Sophie Hainsworth - 25 02 08 - 14:56
Hello you lovely people
Link below to my review, good luck tonight and Saturday!
xoxox
http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/content/..
Carol - 29 02 08 - 14:40
An Outstanding production!
I just saw the last night of the Kaos Dream run, and what I dearly hope will not be the last Kaos production.
I was deeply moved by Xavier’s speech at the start, and having not seen a Kaos production before, you could tell by his demeanour that this company is something real, sincere and special, which was definitely reflected in the performance.
I have never laughed or groaned so much at Shakespeare, or any other play!
Raucously funny, seriously sexy, darkly atmospheric musically, physically demanding acting, an amazing experience.
Reclaiming Shakespeare from the stuffy classroom recitals and ruffle-necked stiffness that turns people off – and giving it back to the people for whom it was written; full of smut and innuendo and slapstick, enmeshed within the beauty of it’s poetry. As a prior post said, William would be spinning in his grave, but with joy and celebration that someone had finally returned it to it’s original intent. Titania being played by a man brought this truth to bear absolutely, given that this is how it would have been back in the day!
Sure, it pushed the boundaries of taste and decency, but the warnings were clearly given so you knew what you were going to get. The ‘ass’ was a joke I have been wanting to see happen for years!
The pole dance with the live club jazz singer and band was a wonderful arrangement or music, poetry and dance – bringing an art back into something that has been lost to stag party sleaze.
I could go on. Kaos simply has to.
The funding cuts are criminal, and I am sure affect many other arts companies, all for the London-Centred Olympics or Government sponsored schemes. Decisions made by faceless cowards from their comfortable seats. What good do you serve?
Viva Kaos!
paul - 03 03 08 - 17:06
I took a party of seven to the last night in Manchester – we were an eclectic mixture of gay and straight – male, female and trans – the christian and faithless – scientists and arts grads – and we all loved it. The vicar analysed the multi-layered richness of Shakespeare’s text, the psychologist was mildly confused by the double casting, but the rest of us just laughed, gasped and occasionally winced throughout.
Vulger and crude? Undoubtedly. Intelligent, subversive and sly? But of course.
Thank you, all of you, for making the last night so rich in so many ways. I love the Dream, but until now I’ve never seen a production which has brought out the heartless callousness that sits right there in the middle of it all.
Thank you. Whatever you talented, clever and bendy people do in the future, I wish you all well.
Keep us posted here.
"Aphra Behn" (URL) - 03 03 08 - 21:44
In response to Sophie Hainsworth,
it’s good to see that the subtle humour was not wasted on you. Why do you assume that anything written by Shakespeare has to kept to its traditional, stereotypical script? Any director can use a script in any way he desires according to whatever vision he had for it.
The Kaos Dream was special because it dared to be different, and it was not just like every other version of this play out there.
Whilst I don’t deny that Shakespeare’s humour is subtly witty and alluring in itself, it doesn’t mean that humour cannot be adapted in any way as seen fit.
Also, why did you watch the play expecting tradition, when you could’ve just researched the play and seen that it gives so much more?
I think, as opposed to patronising, it showed that Shakespeare’s work could still be brilliant, no matter what age or period it’s set in, and I’m all for changing from tradition accordingly. I highly doubt Kaos were patronising you particularly, because it doesn’t seem like you were the audience it was actually aimed towards…
Best wishes!
Megan Colley - 02 04 08 - 19:14
WOW, WOW, WOW! What can i say?? I thought that it was absoloutley incredible. The acting techniques of the actor playing puk was truly inspirational. How i’m going to write about this in my exam i dont know, but thankyou so much, your all terrific! Hope to see you all soon! x
Shaun Campbell (Email) - 24 04 08 - 13:45
some people are very angry at what you guys are doing and say “shakespeare wiill be spinning in his grave”. but frankly, to have yet another version of a midsummer nights dream, would make shakespeare more than happy as how many plays can say that they have lasted like 400 years? good job guys, we certainly enjoyed it :)
Spanish Stallion - 25 04 08 - 12:32
in response to Megan Colley
With all due respect, if she didnt like the play she didn’t like it, and niether did i. i can see why it was how it was, and how they interpreted it was original and clever. but the same thing could have been done, covering the same issues, in the same context, with the same amount of originality, without the pointless smut.
then again, all genius is spurned on contact and praised in future. what can i say i tend to sit on the fence :)
admittedly the play was not to my liking and my Theatre studies teacher warded me off writing about it in an exam because we couldnt think of an elegant way to describe ‘Glory Hole’ but it is just an interpretation.
finally i put this to everyone. If you wrote a play with specific meaning, telling a story the way you want it told, and you put this play on. then hundreds of years down the line someone turns it from magic to tacky porn…how would you feel?
Paul Lonsdale - 01 05 08 - 09:51
But Shakespeare is full of stuff that’s rude, crude and very, very tacky. It takes more effort to hide it than to show it.
I was listening yesterday to a podcast from Warwick University about the original pronunciation of Shakespeare, and the actor showed how Shakespeare was punning “hour” with “whore” in a way that simply doesn’t work in modern speech.
Shakespeare’s comedies are basically “Carry on” films in Doublet and Hose, and do pretend they aren’t is to misunderstand the British character and a more or less unbroken comedic tradition from Chaucer to Roy Chubby Brown. I don’t like all of it, but that’s our heritage, like it or not.
Do you think for a second that Shakespeare didn’t know exactly what he was doing in transforming Bottom into an Ass? The clues are in the names. He could have called the character Ewan and turned him into a Sheep. Or Shagger and turned him into a Ram. He called him Bottom and turned him into an Ass for a reason.
The filth is there, and always has been. Shakespeare isn’t NICE.
If you want to find the podcast I’m talking about look for Will@Warwick on i-tunes.
Cheers.
Aphra.
"Aphra Behn" (Email) (URL) - 01 05 08 - 10:06
Rubbish
When i went to see the play I left with the same kind of feeling as most of the people that went to see it with me; confused and violated. i often say that a bit of confusion in theater is a good thing but in this case I think it couldn’t be further from the truth. For all its humor when i found myself laughing it wasn’t me laughing at the play. It was more of a nervous laugh like when that strange man sits next to you on the bus. Yes Shakespeare did have that in mind when he named Bottom but to say that he intended there to be an over sized rectum for a mans face to be walking around stage is ridiculous.
I’m not a huge Shakespeare fan to quote Paul I pretty much sit on the fence when it comes to his plays. I don’t love him. I don’t hate him. the stories though are undeniably amazing stories and to make them into a huge crude joke in an attempt to make a modern day audience is quite offensive. I can’t say that I’ll want to see a play that is anything like this again.
Callum - 01 05 08 - 11:57
It’s about expectations, though, isn’t it. You expected high culture and fairy-fluff. What you got was bawdy and rather sick. But the bawdiness and sexual-slime are there in the play, (see Measure for Measure if you really want something that’s about sexual slime).
Yes, you can do the Dream with pink tinsel and wands, but it’s much more to the point when it’s about “the strange man sitting next to you on the bus”. Shakespeare’s fairys are pretty sick bastards, they steal children, indulge in sexual and emotional blackmail, they are manipulative, spiteful and cruel. More Karen Matthews than Tinkerbell.
If you look at what Oberon, Puck and Titania DO and listen to what they SAY you’d slap ASBOS on the lot of them and pray to goodness they weren’t your neighbours. They are all “the strange man sitting next to you on the bus” in that respect.
If you ask me, Kaos did a good job in showing up what’s there in the text. It’s there. They didn’t impose it on the text or manipulate it. They just showed the fairy kingdom for the perverse and rather perverted thing that it is. Me, I’ve always worried about the eventual fate of the Indian Boy.
Aphra.
Aphra Behn (Email) (URL) - 01 05 08 - 12:17
Also answering Spanish stallions question. thousands of plays from the Ancient Greeks onwards.
Callum - 01 05 08 - 12:20
Spanish stallion owned by callum there!
Paul Lonsdale - 08 05 08 - 09:09
Callum, must say that you have pretty much summed up my reaction to the production as well, aside from my feeling physically sick at the sheer awfulness of what I saw.
Aphra, I believe you, as Megan did, have missed the point that these critics are trying to make. They have not missed the sexual drive of certain parts of the play, but are making the point that Kaos did not present this aspect in a clever way. The director’s concept would suggest that the only reason for all of the sexuality in the production was because of his discovery that the actress playing Hermia could pole dance – not exactly a good enough reason to affect an entire interpretation is it? I expected a modern interptretation of the play, and would have been delighted to fnd something really daring; I am not a traditionalist and believe that to maintain Shakespeare’s relevance, directors should be working with his plays in a modern way, but this production just did not speak to me. Nudity has abounded on stage since the 1970’s and can be used to great shock effect, but this was simply gratuitous. I feel sickened by anyone describing the production as ‘sexy’; it was repulsive.
For a production that was supposedly ‘phsyical fuelled’, the cast’s use of the body was attrocious. The funding cut must have hit them pretty hard because they all looked as if they had given up; the fight between Demetrius and Lysander, and the portrayal of Puck, always a particularly agile character, being especially weak and lazy.
The setting, too, was very confused. The wearing of tracksuits and string vests, as well as the fruit machine, would suggest it to be a working men’s club, yet the pole dancing, modern bar and the presence of transvestites better fitted a place more sleazy and modern.
All in all, the production had a horrible whiff of ‘let’s just chuck it all in’; I was shocked only to see the extent to which these artists would degrade themselves, the material being too poorly executed to be alarming in itself. It is unfortunate that many drama students, myself included, now have to give this production credence by writing about it in an impartial way in a public exam.
Hannah Moore - 12 05 08 - 18:35
Hannah, you’ve put your arguments cogently and backed them up. I don’t agree with them, but I respect them, and I am beginning to understand them. The arguments of the previous posters, basically amounted to “yukk, that’s ikky” and really didn’t speak to me.
I’m really intrigued to know what you would consider “more daring” and what “a modern interpretation of the play” would be in your book. I hope I don’t come across as confrontational in asking that. I’m genuinely curious and would like to understand more about what you think could be done with the play. I’ve probably seen more productions of the Dream than anything else and, given your comments about what you were hoping for, I’m curious to know what you would do with it. As I’ve said, I’d look for something darkly gothic and, as you know, I found the crudeness of the Kaos production actually quite refreshing because it is the only one I’ve seen which suggested that the fairies might be perverted as well as perverse. Pratchett’s take on the play is interesting: he casts the fairies as glamorous, self-obsessed and entirely lacking in empathy which makes them casually cruel in the way that cats are to mice, and I confess his interpretation has coloured mine. That and the fact that my cat’s a lithe, lean, fit heartless bastard of a serial killer.
If you choose to comment again on your ideas about how to do the Dream, I’d be very interested.
Thanks for articulating your objections to the Kaos production so clearly. I still disagree, (no surprise!) but I am beginning to understand.
Cheers
Aphra.
(PS – a lot of sex is repulsive. I for one didn’t find it sexy, but I did find it sexual.)
Aphra Behn (Email) (URL) - 12 05 08 - 19:09
Wheyyy! 
Martin - 15 05 08 - 09:09
I’m not entirely sure of how I would have liked it to have been daring; I suppose that’s the job of the director. I’d merely say that I’m open to interpretation of this play, but that to sexualise it wasn’t, in my view, daring (especially as it only contained partial nudity).
I recently played ‘Puck’ and was keen for the dark elements you speak of to be represented, because I find the ‘jolly jester’ incarnation of many productions nauseating and wholly unrepresentative of a side of the character. In the interpretation, Oberon’s fairies all moved in a scurrying, crouched crawl, and created lighting in the very dark audotirium with head lights. They became almost repulsive in this; snivellingly loyal to Oberon, yet ultimately quite evil in their meddling. Titania’s fairies were decidely more glamorous, holding an upright position and using a fluidity of movement. Part of what I really missed from Kaos’ production was this physicality. I believe that the fairies should be central to any production because they tamper in all three worlds, and therefore the decision to cut most of Puck’s lines seemed wrong because it disallowed the presentation of a fully rounded character. Although the lack of cast members couldn’t allow for this, it would have helped to have had the fairies as a constant physical presence. I appreciate that the influences of sex trafficking, porn and strip bars etc. should add quite a freshly dark element to the interpreation, but I actually don’t think the fairies were anywhere near perverse enough, due to their costume (doodleboppers), their singing of songs and their small amount of time on stage.
I hopethis has answered your question in a satifactory manner. If not, I’d be happy to reply again.
Hannah Moore (Email) - 17 05 08 - 19:10
Ok calum. you obviously didnt enjoy it. and you are right. it was profanity and it would have probably been illegal a few decades ago. but that is exactly what makes it good. its dangerous, it took a risk. it still takes a risk as many people walked out when we watched it! But the fact that those people get out there and do… what they do. its a credit to Shakespeare i reckon.
Spanish Stallion - 04 06 08 - 08:35
I’m in agreement with Hannah here, I thought the play was basically vulgar. In what way was Shakespeare writing about nipple tassels? Personally, I think the last scene where the entire cast appear in them just goes to prove how unnecessary this whole ‘sexual’ theme is.
I’m not saying that sex as a theme should not be included if you’re trying to modernise the play, but I believe Max Reinhardt’s version was far more daring than this production will ever be, and that was in the 1930s.
The music, in my opinion, was simple not atmospheric and, along with the vulgar nudity, ruined the production for me.
The truth is, nobody knows whether Shakespeare himself would appreciate it or not. Over the years his play has been torn apart, the original text rarely entirely used, with music and set taking centre stage and demolishing the words that Will put so much effort into writing.
So how can you say that, no matter what is done to his play, he’d still appreciate it just because it’s lasted a long time?
Jenni - 09 06 08 - 17:26
I went to see it as part of our A Level exam (which I have yet to do) and I can say I was warned by my drama teacher that it would not be what we expected from Shakespeare.
I have to say at parts of it I was rather repulsed,and I see what was trying to be achieved, but I feel it could have been done in a different way. Yes the whole idea was to shock us, and Shakespeare is notoriously sexual, but there was no need for it all.
I was laughing towards the end, not because it was funny, but because I felt nervous. The Mechanicals didn’t even need to be in it as they only appeared at the end…what a waste of good characters!
However, I did like the (de)sexualisation of the mortals, which I thought was conveyed really well. There are many ways you can look at it, but I thought that they were being desexualised, back to human nature.
My drama teacher said that the play is actually about sexual awakening, but I think KAOS proved this early on, then decided to play around with gimmicks, such as the three foot long penis, which was really gawdy and awful. I agree about the Bottom comment made earlier on, it was nowhere near as funny as when he is a donkey-ass. Things were far too literal!
I do feel sad that KAOS is being cut its funding, as this play has given me lots to write about in my exam as contrasts to other productions because it is so undeniably different. I hope some other company will be as daring as you…albeit in a slighty more mature way.
But thanks for a good performance,and a change of pace from the more traditional Shakespearean plays!
Debbie - 12 06 08 - 21:15
is this site maintained?
just wondering
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