My family’s midsummer night’s dream

LAST Friday evening, the Dooleys went to savour some Shakespeare. The setting was a natural theatre in Temple Carrig School, which is in Greystones, Co. Wicklow. The play was Romeo And Juliet, but it was a performance with a difference.

It all began the previous Monday when, fresh from Irish college, our eldest attended his first morning of a Shakespeare drama camp. The idea, conceived by Paul Cullen of Arclight Drama Studio, was daring to say the least: present a group of young actors with a play they have never read, get them to learn every line and prepare them to perform it before a live audience. ‘Ay, there’s the rub’: they had to do it all in a single week.

What ‘midsummer madness’, you say, and you might well be correct. How on earth could you get young teenagers to do what it takes professional actors a good six months to achieve? What’s more, they had to do it all in sweltering heat.

Our eldest was cast as the unfortunate Friar Laurence – a man whose plan to save Romeo and Juliet from their feuding families has unforeseen tragic consequences. The friar is trusted by both protagonists and, indeed, marries them in secret. It is also he who provides Juliet with a potion that will enable her to feign death.

From early morning, the group worked tirelessly on their lines. Paul put them through their paces on stage, acquainting them with their characters and polishing their performances. Then, each evening, they would knuckle down at home to learn a language more than 400 years old.

It was not easy. Their job was not to learn and act in an edited version of the play. It was to perfect, from scratch, the complete and unabridged edition.

By Thursday night, our eldest was moving through the house in full Franciscan habit. Not only that, but he had also given Friar Laurence an aristocratic English accent with a comic twist. Normally sombre and serene, ‘our’ Laurence was morphing into a hybrid of an English royal and a medieval Pope.

Mrs Dooley and I did not believe they could successfully master something so complex in five days. Like all Shakespeare, Romeo And Juliet is a complex tragedy which demands emotion, passion and a deep understanding of the underlying moral. This was, we felt, too much to ask of people so young and inexperienced.

The fateful day arrived, and we were on tenterhooks. That morning, we bade the good friar adieu, knowing that the next time we saw him would be on stage. Then, that evening, we made our way, in trepidation, to Temple Carrig.

Deep down, I really didn’t mind how they performed the play. The fact that people so young opted to sacrifice a week of their holidays to learn Shakespeare was, in itself, wonderful.

At a time when most teenagers would prefer to text than converse, isn’t it just marvellous that some still desire to claim the riches of the language?

Think, for a moment, about how much the English language was shaped by Shakespeare. Even today, people are unaware that so many of their phrases are Shakespearean. ‘We have seen better days’ is a phrase we all use, but did you know that it comes straight out of Timon Of Athens?

‘All that glitters is not gold’ is a variation of ‘All that glisters is not gold’ from The Merchant Of Venice. And who could possibly have travelled through life without being warned: ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’ Most famously, ‘To be, or not to be’ is, perhaps, the greatest philosophical question ever posed, while, ‘To thine own self be true’ is undoubtedly the best advice.

SHAKESPEARE is immortal because he uses language to capture the most fundamental truths of the human condition. From the moment they arrived on that sundrenched stage, it was obvious that the boys and girls understood this. In word, deed, gesture and song, they not only rose to the challenge, but showed why there is no finer education than the timeless work of William Shakespeare.

Romeo And Juliet has had a long history, but I doubt there was ever an occasion when Friar Laurence had his audience in hysterics of laughter. Then again, I doubt he was ever performed so hilariously.

Indeed, each of the actors made it seem like the play was written only yesterday.

They did it all in just five days. Midsummer madness?

More like a midsummer night’s dream!