While a number of small independent companies are making commercial comedies about current social issues, the National Theater Company of China performs Shakespeare's classic A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Poly Theater until November 11.

Directed by 72-year-old Liang Bolong, former dean of the Performing Department of China Central Academy of Drama, the production features a star-studded cast, including She Ke, Jiang Xiaohan, Yin Xiaotian, Liu Hua and this year's champion "Super Boy" Su Xing.

Nearly every theater director shares a special connection with Shakespeare, and Liang is no exception.

"I have taught Shakespeare to hundreds of students over the last 40 years and have directed many of the bard's plays. This might be the last one," Liang says.

"Shakespeare, in some people's minds, is an abstract facet of high-culture. Yes, it is in some ways, but not in all. A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of his most-often performed plays and is a delightful comedy. I try to explore The Bard's humor and wisdom in a modern way, a way that today's theater-goers would easily appreciate," says the director.

"The play contains some wonderfully lyrical expressions of lighter Shakespearean themes, most notably those of love, dreams and the stuff of both - the creative imagination itself. If the play can be said to convey a message, it is that the creative imagination is in tune with the supernatural world and is best used to confer the blessings of nature upon mankind and marriage," he adds.

But the veteran director faces the challenge of dealing with a cast that, despite including many big names, is made up of actors who often have little professional training in stage performance or have not given a theatrical performance for a long time.

Actor Yin Xiaotian, who now enjoys great popularity for his roles on TV, studied at the Central Academy of Drama but has not performed in a theater play for six years. He says it was difficult to find the right approach when rehearsal began a month ago. As a young girl, Jiang Xiaohan was something of a Chinese Shirley Temple, and she went on to study drama and movie studies at the University of Manchester from 2001-05, but she has little real onstage experience.

"Super Boy" Su Xing plays a leading role and composed the play's theme song.

The main plot of A Midsummer Night Dream is a convoluted story of two couples - Hermia and Lysander (Yin Xiaotian), and Helena (Jiang Xiaohan) and Demetrius (Su Xing). Their romantic crisscrossing is further complicated when they enter the play's fairyland woods, where the King and Queen (Shi Ke) of the Fairies rule, and the impish character Puck - AKA Robin Goodfellow - plies his trade. Another set of characters - Bottom the weaver and his bumptious band of "rude mechanics" - stumble into the thick of things when they wander into the same enchanted woods to rehearse a play that is very loosely and comically based on the myth of Pyramus and Thisbe, their hilarious homespun piece, which occupies all of Act Five of Shakespeare's comedy.

The play is staged at 7:30 pm until November 11 at Poly Theater.

(China Daily November 3, 2007)