Happy in 'Dream' job at 94

Director Michael Hurst says he initially felt A Midsummer Night's Dream was full of "rinky, tinky fairy stuff" but now sees its depth. Photo / Dean Purcell

Nonagenarian eldest actor in surprising take on much-loved Shakespearian play

There was only one thing that mildly irked Joyce Irving when she got her performance schedule for A Midsummer Night's Dream: she wouldn't appear every night.

But after some brief reflection, Irving decided if she'd been directing - as she did in her native England and, later, in New Zealand in the 1950s, 60s and 70s - she would have done exactly the same as Michael Hurst and drawn up a roster for the actors playing the fairies.

After all, chuckles the 94-year-old, it's probably unwise to have a nonagenarian performing every night, particularly during humid February. She "most certainly" didn't mind when Hurst told her and her fellow fairies - from the senior citizens' theatre group Marvellous - that he wanted them to have an ancient wisdom and rancid charisma.

"Having worked with Michael before, I jumped at the idea because he is such a visionary," she says, over tea and home-made scones at her Auckland home.

"We fairies are going to be eye-poppingly different."

Irving, a founder member of Theatre Corporate, is the most senior in a 45-strong cast which ranges in age from 18-94, and includes actors and musicians from right across the Auckland region, led by well-known actor Alistair Browning as Oberon, King of the Fairies.

Now chairman of the Auckland Summer Shakespeare Trust, this is Hurst's third time directing the annual production, following Measure for Measure in 1987 and King Lear in 1990.

Described as one of our foremost Shakespeare professionals, he also has under his belt five Hamlets, four King Lears, four Macbeths, two Romeo and Juliets and two Othellos. In 2013's King Lear - the golden anniversary of Summer Shakespeare - he played the Fool and served as artistic consultant. But this is the first time Hurst has directed A Midsummer Night's Dream. While he's seen some "amazing" productions of it over the years, he always thought the play was a bit light but then he read it and the more he thought about it, decided it was really funny, naughty and lent itself beautifully to the "event nature" of the outdoor Summer Shakespeare.

"It didn't appeal to me for ages partly because I thought it was full of sort of rinky, tinky, winky, dinkly-dell fairy stuff but there are actually some pretty deep layers to it."

Of course, Hurst has devised ways to breathe new life into it; especially important given it is the most performed play in the Auckland Summer Shakespeare's repertoire, having been produced six times in the event's 52-year history. "I never start anything without knowing what it's going to be," he says, adding that it will take audiences into a strange and unpredictable dreamtime-type world.

One of the first decisions Hurst made was that the fairies would be played by the Marvellous actors as worldly-wise observers watching over the young lovers with a kind of "seen it all before" jaded mischievousness. Hurst told them, with the rest of the cast, they had to be prepared to work hard.

"The Summer Shakespeare is about encouraging and inspiring the next generation, so why not embrace fully that philosophy and introduce them to working with a group of motivated and wonderful older people?"

Performance
What: A Midsummer Night's Dream
Where and when: Old Arts Plaza, University of Auckland, February 13-March 7