Stage

BEING OUT of the country on holidays means I have yet to see the latest interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (Gate Theatre) but one fellow journalist did describe it as "a menopausal sex fantasy". Flo McSweeney, starring as Titania, and recipient of most critical kudos for her performance, certainly doesn't see it as such.

"It is all about fantasy and it's very sexual but the response I got from a guy, in the bar of the Gate one night, was 'Hey, that was like takin' acid!' And he loved it!," she says, laughing. "And it is a great trip. It's a romp through Shakespeare and it takes a lot of liberties with the text, which has led to some critics declaring that purists won't enjoy the show. But I honestly think you'd need to be a real stick-in-the-mud purist not to get some joy from this production, which somebody else said to me is like The Rocky Horror Picture Show. I certainly get great joy playing Titania, though it's hard work."

One of the "liberties" director Joe Dowling has taken with the Bard's work is to set some of his texts to rap music, a move that would, no doubt, have made Willie do the hand jive with glee. Flo, fresh from her tour with Rob Strong and a long-time lover of jazz, is equally happy at the chance she gets, at one point, to slip inside her Peggy-Lee-as-Titania mode.

"I get to do a smoky, seductive number and what it's made me reconnect with is my desire to do a one-woman-show based on the life of a Peggy Lee type character, conveying her life story through songs. That's something I'd love to do after this, though, at the same time I want to do more theatre because I find it so challenging and rewarding. It's like all the training I got as a singer has led me to this point."

Equally, Flo McSweeney is honest enough to admit that all the experiences she's had in life have led her to a point where she now can talk with unbridled confidence about her plans for the future. This wasn't always the case, she says.

"I really have come to the conclusion that life works in cycles" she says, pensively. "Around the time I last talked to you, for Hot Press , while I was doing the Yeats plays, I was dreadfully unhappy and, I admit, my life was a mess. Part of the problem was that I found it very hard to make the transition from being a successful television presenter and a known face to a career falling apart and having to accept things that you feel are beneath you. Like I really was saying for ages 'I shouldn't be just singing in restaurants for a paltry amount of money'.

"My pride was getting in the way and I was turning down gigs until I realised that was a silly way to carry on. Not that I lost my pride and started accepting anything that was offered! On the contrary, I just realise that you have to operate at a point beyond things like pride and ego and just do the best job you can, in any given circumstances. That's what I hope I'm doing in A Midsummer Night's Dream."

Also recommended. Brian Friels' Wonderful Tennessee (Abbey Theatre). More of a discussion on metaphysics aspiring towards great theatre, Friel's latest work is both profoundly provocative and deeply disappointing. However it is a play no theatre lover can afford to miss. Anyone visiting Galway also can't afford to miss any show by the Druid Theatre Company who provided a definite highlight of the recent Arts festival, for this viewer, with their impeccably produced and wonderfully funny production of George Fitzmaurice's The Ointment Blue. Upcoming openings include the No Exit Theatre Company's production of Richard Cameron's Can't Stand Up For Falling Down, which focuses on the effects one man's violence has on three women, and two plays by Jennifer Johnson at Dublin's Project theatre, O Ananias, Ozarlas and Misael and Twinkletoes. Both plays are portraits of women and ask: "Who are the heroes and victims in the tragedy that is Northern Ireland?