What do you get if you cross Shakespeare with Gilbert and Sullivan? You get Wilsmore's Dream, a fantasy of music and comedy that must have been as much fun to write as it so obviously was to perform and for last night's audience to receive with rapturous applause at its premiere.

             It is the plot of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented in the style of  G and S (plus a scattering of other composers) and at times it becomes an hilarious send-up of them all. Shakespeare's words emerge rarely and are quickly put down. "Ill met by moonlight" says Oberon. "Why can't you just say Hello" retorts Titania.

            Topical references filter through ... and some lyrics twist into tortuous Gilbertian rhymes. The best Sullivan sound is in 'False or True?'. There's a full flight of fairies and an army of artisan actors all coming together in the hilarious opera-within-opera of Pyramus and Thisbe.

            This really is a dream of a Dream.

 

Geoff  Hammerton

Derby Evening Telegraph