Bard offers a lens on pandemic

Lydia Blomfield plays the barber-surgeon in this year’s Shakespeare in the Park production, A Plague O’ Both Your Houses. PHOTOS: LUISA GIRAO

Shakespeare in the Park is back at Queens Park in Invercargill this week with its production of A Plague O’ Both Your Houses.

After having its production livestreamed last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the Shakespeare in the Park Charitable Trust managed to bring live theatre to the gardens again with a timely production.

Director Angela Newell said this year’s play was based around Shakespearean treatments of health and medicine.

It illuminated some of the customs, beliefs and practices from Elizabethan life, which could be compared with present times when the community was grappling with Covid-19, she said.

Ricky Andrews, Maggie Pirie and Victoria Morgan in action during the dress rehearsal in the park earlier this week.

"Whether it’s Ophelia’s grief or Romeo’s quest to find poison, or King’s Lear’s senility — Shakespeare wove his own understanding of health and wellbeing (or lack of it) into his plays.

"With our current focus on the pandemic, it is interesting to reflect on what similarities and differences there are between Shakespeare’s world and ours."

A Plague O’ Both Your Houses will be presented from today until Sunday at 6pm, with two extra sessions at 2pm at the weekend.