Lucknow: Blending magic, romance and mischief, the play ‘Island of Dreams’ was staged by Bhartendu Natya Akademi at UP Sangeet Natak Akademi on Wednesday.Presented by the second-year students of BNA, the play was adapted from William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. Directed by Shubhodeep Raha, the play featured a fusion of Indo-Western music by Bhaskar Jyoti Konwar. “We have tried to show illusion on stage as the play’s plot revolves around magic. Using different magic tricks, we have tried to create magic. For example, characters come out from a chair, characters disappear from a box, and there are dance sequences also,” said the director. The play begins with Oberon, a mischievous magician and his fairies. Bored by the predictability of their own magic, they create a new world shaped less by spells than by human impulse. In this dreamlike island space, lovers and rulers collide as authority, rebellion, and desire intensify. In the end, when magic dissolves the fairies come out into the the human world, where they witness the reality of human behaviour and human relationships.
