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Canberra Today 12°/15° | Saturday, March 30, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Arts / Play mixes peculiar rhymes with iPhones

Trying to rhyme: Cast of “The Popular Mechanicals”. Photo by David James McCarthy. 
IT’s very difficult to rhyme “Hey nonny nonny” with “funny” and the actors from the State Theatre Company of SA’s show, “The Popular Mechanicals”, won’t be any help in guiding its viewers, if today’s media call in the Playhouse was indication.

The Mechanicals are the Athenian tradesmen from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” who put on the play “Pyramus and Thisbe” for the wedding of Theseus and Hippolyta.

There’s Peter Quince the carpenter (Rory Walker), Snug the joiner (Holly Austin), Nick Bottom the weaver (Charles Mayer), Francis Flute the bellows-mender (Nathan O’Keefe) , Tom Snout the tinker (Lori Bell) and Robin Starveling the tailor (Julie Forsyth).

Directed by Sara Giles, this is a revival of a play by actor-director Geoffrey Rush, Shakespeare, Tony Taylor and Keith Robinson.

This morning, media were treated to snippets of songs interspersing Shakespeare lines, peculiar rhymes and references to iPhone and other modern technological phenomena as the world-famous amateurs, the Athenian Mechanicals, known to schoolchildren everywhere, prepare themselves for the “tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love”.

“The Popular Mechanicals”, The Playhouse, November 1-4. Bookings to canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 6275 2700.

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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