I haven’t seen a lot of Shakespeare’s plays and recently I haven’t seen one for a while. So the idea, that they are playing Shakespeare in the open air seemed very attractive and as the weather had been nice and sunny too, we decided to go to see it.
The play was performed in Casino Marino park. Casino Marino was built at the end of the 18-th century as a home of Charlemont Earl James Caulfield. So the name Casino comes from Italian word “casa”, which means home and there has never been a real casino in this house. From all the four sides the Casino is guarded by stone lions and the view to the Wicklow mountains of the background is breathtaking.
Unfortunately, they haven’t paid too much attention to the windows, which are really very small but probably the view from the balcony is picturesque. The house is an example of neo-classical architecture, it seems very small outside but has 16 rooms inside but we didn’t come here to enjoy the pearls of architecture because we have come to see the Irish Shakespeare and so we move on to the small meadow at the end of the park.
The .audience is well prepared – some of them had even taken picnic baskets with food and wine with them and everyone, even the small children, were enjoying themselves and “Measure to Measure” by William Shakespeare with a small Irish twist began.
The first Irish twist brings all the story to Dublin where the biggest problems are immorality and cheating. So during the play, we must get to know who is the father of the child of the poor pregnant girl who has been sent to do the laundry for the nuns and if he would be hung for that sin at once or would there be some other way to save his soul. Thank god, they don’t hang him and they all live happily ever after 🙂
I enjoyed the play in spite of some language problems with Shakespeare’s text, local accent, and jokes I didn’t get so perfectly but it didn’t matter at all. It was a nice evening, a new experience and good actors that made it up for me. Now I really want to go to the real theatre in Dublin.
Dublin Accent 