Orcas Center is pleased to present two great Shakespearean Plays during the month of November on screen in HD: A Midsummer’s Night Dream and The Tempest.
November 2nd, 1pm: A Midsummer’s Night Dream
National Theatre LIVE
Tiered Ticket Pricing: $12, $25, $47
A feuding fairy King and Queen of the forest cross paths with four runaway lovers and a troupe of actors trying to rehearse a play. As their dispute grows, the magical royal couple meddle with mortal lives leading to love triangles, mistaken identities and transformations… with hilarious, but dark consequences.
Shakespeare’s most famous romantic comedy will be captured live from the Bridge Theatre in London. Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones), Oliver Chris (Green Wing, NT Live: Young Marx), David Moorst (NT Live: Allelujah!) and Hammed Animashaun (The Barber Shop Chronicles) lead the cast as Titania, Oberon, Puck and Bottom.
Directed by Nicholas Hytner, this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream will build on the success of his immersive staging of Julius Caesar (NT Live 2018). The Bridge Theatre will become a forest – a dream world of flying fairies, contagious fogs and moonlight revels, surrounded by a roving audience following the action on foot.
November 9th, 1pm: The Tempest
Stratford Festival
Tiered Ticket Pricing: $12, $25, $47
“Magic is in the air” (Broadway World) in the Stratford Festival’s latest production of Shakespeare’s final masterpiece, The Tempest, “an elaborate production with eye-popping costumes” (The New York Times), recorded live in 2019.
For twelve years, Prospero (Martha Henry), former Duchess of Milan and a practitioner of the magical arts, has been marooned on a remote island with her young daughter, Miranda (Mamie Zwettler). They landed there by chance after Prospero’s brother, Antonio (aided by Alonso, King of Naples), deposed her from her throne and cast her and Miranda—then not quite three years old—out to sea in a decaying and ill-equipped vessel. Prospero has spent her exile establishing dominion over the island’s other inhabitants, the monstrous creature Caliban (Michael Blake) and the spirit Ariel (André Morin).
Now, alerted by a sign in the heavens that Antonio and Alonso (Graham Abbey and David Collins) are within reach of her vengeance, she uses her magical powers to raise a storm at sea that brings them and the others aboard their ship, including Alonso’s son, Ferdinand (Sébastien Heins), to the same island. With Ariel’s help, Prospero orchestrates a confrontation with her old enemies—and a new destiny for Miranda. Befitting the play’s origins as the original sci-fi story, the production features “spectacular stagecraft” (Postmedia) and is filled with “giant monsters and sparkling special effects” (The Globe and Mail). “Seeing it is a joy” (Toronto Star).
