The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane

The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane PIC CREDIT Ros Kavanagh

THEATRE: IRELAND

FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT

“The innovation and cheek were non-stop.” The Financial Times (UK)

The TV3 Season of Pan Pan’s irreverent riff on Hamlet doesn’t so much update or deconstruct the play as explode it.

Innovative, witty and engaging, the first half of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane is staged as an audition. Would-be Hamlets interpret the lead, attempting to impress the director and the audience with their unique takes on Shakespeare’s troubled prince. In yet another twist, a canine Great Dane takes to the stage. Who is going to be, or not to be, Hamlet? Can anyone escape playing the ‘Great’ Dane?

In the second half of the play, the stage is a hall of mirrors. The play-within-a-play, enacted by a troupe of Wellington schoolboy actors, is Hamlet itself.

Visually stunning, The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane was the winner of Best Production and Best Set Design at the 2010 Irish Times Theatre Awards and was unanimously awarded the Critics’ Choice as Best Show in the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, 2010.

Ireland’s Pan Pan Theatre was formed in 1991. The company has developed a unique aesthetic, exploring new forms, approaches and experiments with time, space, music and performance. Pan Pan’s recent productions include a Mandarin-language adaptation of Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World in Beijing and a musical take on a familiar myth in Oedipus Loves You.

Interactive and audacious, Pan Pan’s The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane will be relished by both Shakespeare aficionados and novices alike.

The TV3 Season of The Rehearsal, Playing the Dane is at TSB Bank Arena from 24 to 28 February for the 2012 New Zealand International Arts Festival, Wellington, 24 February – 18 March. Tickets $38 – $68 available from Ticketek.

ENDS

Sponsored by TV3

With support from Arts Council Ireland and Culture Ireland

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