Capetonians are celebrating the return of the Maynardville Open Air Theatre Festival after a three-year hiatus. VR Theatrical’s six-week programme of classical music, ballet, opera and - you guessed it - Shakespeare has brought a venerable arts venue back to life. The main feature, a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, opens in February.
The Festival launched earlier this month with the Cape Town Philharmonic Orchestra performing Mendelssohn’s overture and incidental music for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Then it was the turn of Cape Town Opera, with their double-bill of Songs of Shakespeare and Spirituals.
Now the cast of an innovative new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, starring Chi Mhende and Mark Elderkin, takes to the stage. Director Geoff Hyland is well-known to Maynardville audiences, having previously directed Macbeth (2004), Twelfth Night (2006 and 2017), As You Like It (2009) and Richard III (2019).
The festival will close in the first week of March with Cape Town City Ballet’s SummerSnow - a programme of two works “contrasting the heat of summer with performances inspired by sharp, icy winter themes”.*
*A little Shakespeare ZA footnote: do you know about the interesting - and largely forgotten - early history of ballet at Maynardville, which laid the groundwork for the venue’s much-vaunted Shakespearean tradition? Check out Shakespeare in Southern Africa volume 34 to learn more in an article by Sheila Chisholm and Temple Hauptflesich.