My Head’s in a Whirl

The Auckland Fringe Festival production by Interacting Theatre, a Disability Arts Theatre Company, turns expectations about ability and disability upside down, just as the players in A Midsummer Night’s Dream render love topsy-turvy…

The Auckland Fringe Festival is always a time to see acts you might not get a chance to see; My Head’s in a Whirl is no exception.

Playing two shows only at TAPAC, Western Springs, this production, by Interacting Theatre, a Disability Arts Theatre Company, turns expectations about ability and disability upside down, just as the players in A Midsummer Night’s Dream render love topsy-turvy.

As a Shakespeare lover, watching those old familiar words being discovered anew by novice actors and novice audiences brings a thrill; delight in the power of the language to compel, tell a story and entice the actor into his or her best performance.

The various actors from the company excelled in allowing their own enjoyment of the process to shine through delightful perfomances that mashed up a modern twist on Romeo and Juliet, a dark and magical Macbeth, and a Ponsonby-centric interpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

All in all, a delightful way to spend an hour in a week marred by tragedy. Interacting Theatre’s troupe of players, like the Mechanicals in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, sent us out into the Auckland sunshine, as if emerged from a dream:
“If we shadows have offended/ Think but this and all is mended /That you have but slumber’d here/ While these visions did appear.”

For more info on Auckland Fringe please see www.aucklandfringe.co.nz.

By Kate Hannah, 24 February 2011.