Midsummer Magic with the Neighbours

This weekend we enjoyed a little midsummer magic, an open air production of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' on Midsummer Day, early evening.   Warm weather, beautiful setting, excellent acting.

Our wonderful cast, not a great photograph but this was the cast taking a final bow.

A cast of eight put on a magical and entertaining performance for an audience of at least two hundred people, including a couple of dozen local people.    

Each actor played at least two roles, most had three, so you can imagine the number of costume changes they had to make - all done in a little gazebo erected between the back of the stage and the bird enclosures at the back.    The peacocks, confined for the night, found it very entertaining and put on a display of their own.

My six year-old granddaughter led the laughter, she was spellbound for the whole time - and not by the peacocks.    She created a little magic for the company,  her completely honest reaction to the buffoonery within the play seemed to give some adults permission to relax and enjoy things, too.   

Her ten year old brother was more restrained, though he delighted in some of the slightly more risque jokes.      

Well done to the cast and well done to our friends at the watermill.  It was their first venture into offering some evening entertainment and it was brilliant - helped by this unusually fine spell of warm weather.         

Many people opted to take food with them, but even more took advantage of the watermill's new pizza oven - orders were being delivered at a rate of knots.      Their investment seems to be paying off and I am delighted for them.    

The couple took the place over four or five years ago and they have worked tirelessly since then.  Investing so much of themselves into the place, trying to be creative and yet not tread on the toes of the village pub.

They have invested in an outdoor cinema set-up so, if the good weather continues through the summer, we can look forward to some very nice evenings out.   The next theatre production is 'Alice in Wonderland', not a great favourite of mine, but I will be there.

At the end of the evening we were able to just pick up and fold our chairs then walk the couple of hundred yards down the lane to home.   Perfect!      




I am way behind on replying to comments, visiting blogs - sorry.    A pesky and persistent headache has kept me resting; I was determined not to let it grow into a full-blown migraine, I didn't want to miss the theatre production.