A Midsummer Night's Dream

At ''The Days of Macedonian Theatre'' held in 2006 in Gavella, when Skopje Drama Theatre presented its three productions, the theatre-goers in Zagreb were able to see two plays directed by Alexander Popovski: Goran Stefanovski's Proud Flesh and Molière's Don Juan. Both had shown that behind them stood a director who didn't want to modestly ''transfer the text to the stage'', but approached it as a model he wished to play with and transpose it into visually impressive images on the set. We believe that Shakespeare's classic is a play that invokes precisely that kind of directorial approach, because the play's vividness is unquestionable and its imaginative interpreters are imperative.

The story, woven out of three basic threads: the courtly plot (where the leading roles, beside Theseus and Hippolyta, are played by two pairs of lovers), the world of ''rude mechanicals'' (with their performance of a crude play of the tragic love between Pyramus and Thisbe) and the fairy world (with Oberon, Titania, Puck and the other fairies and elves), will involve a big part of our theatre's ensemble, first and foremost asking our actors to ''play'' and let themselves be drawn into an unrestrained dialogue with Shakespeare's unique characters.

Wittily coloured vitality of ''the mechanicals'', ethereal othersidedness of the fairy world and the classicism of the Athens scenes seem an ideal proving ground for the eclecticism of Alexander Popovski, who has so far, beside in Macedonia, worked on numerous European stages and this is not the first time he's directing in Zagreb (Dejan Dukovski's Cabaret Balkan in Kerempuh Satirical Theatre a few years ago). ... the miraculous A Midsummer Night's Dream should remind us of ''...what fools these mortals be!''

''...this 'Dream' falls into the very top of the domestic productions in the closing year, not to say the gasping year. (...) There's not a single bad actor in the play, there's even no mediocrity, everything is arranged to the last detail. (...) Being that all is a dream, that the theatre and life intertwine up to the point of unrecognizability, ironic frisking with the text, especially when it is in rhymed verse, is also possible, as well as the actors' self-irony; so that it seems that the entire production is sprinkled with a little Brechtian magic dust which gives us the impression that the theatre is more than unobligatory acting.'' (Jasen Boko, ''Globus'')

''Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' directed by Macedonian director Alexander Popovski is the best ensemble production in Gavella in the last ten years. (...) Popovski choice and motivating of the cast is excellent. He made an imaginative, funny, obscene, but also painful reconstruction of the seemingly frivolous Shakespeare's saga of love.'' (Tomislav Čadež, ''Jutarnji List'')

''The production is full of charge that explodes in a polyphony of acting, in the music, in the set design, in the spleen that consumes the entire stage and spreads on to the audience which becomes a single, director's dream. (...) The cast did a wonderful job. It rarely happens, and this time it really did happen, that all of the actors have their artistic moment. Two of the actors stand out though, both dramaturgically and creativelly, Pero Kvrgić and Ozren Grabarić. Kvrgić's Puck moves and pushes the events with its magical expressivity; he knows why it's important to dream. (...) A brilliant and a rarely seen performance is given by Ozren Grabarić in the role of Bottom. (...) He mirrored both the power of the dream and the reality of the awakening.'' (Andrija Tunjić, ''Vjesnik'')

''...the new 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'' will undoubtedly bring people to the theatre.'' (Maja Stanetti, ''Večernji List'')

''Popovski's pop-approach suits Hrvoje Klobučar, who gives his best performance yet, but it also suits all who like to play with the theatre – from Ozren Grabarić in the role of the ass, which he used to the fullest, to Janko Rakoš and Sven Šestak.'' (Igor Ružić, Radio 101)

''Dijak brings joy to the stage, along with the self-inflicting unrest and an almost jubilating enthusiasm. And while Pero Kvrgić capitalizes the ambiguities of Puck's capability in erotic confusion in a Brechtian manner, Dijak manages to play Kvrgić's opposite: he manages to reach the naiveté or the organic emotion of rapture. That is an extremelly difficult stage achievement.'' (Nataša Govedić, ''Novi List'')