Busy artistic director of The Q in Queanbeyan, Jordan Best, has made life a little busier by casting herself in the double roles of Titania and Hippolyta in an upcoming revival of her outdoor A Midsummer Night’s Dream, writes HELEN MUSA.

Last seen in November 2024, Jordan Best’s outdoor production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream looks like the perfect Christmas fare, especially as Best is adamant this is no dark, foreboding take on malevolent fairies, but rather a happy romp with a happy ending.

Best is no stranger to Shakespeare’s Dream, having also staged an indoor production at The Q in 2013.

Over the years she’s played Bottom, Hermia, Helena and Demetrius in other productions and now, in a traditional double-casting, she’ll play Hippolyta, bride of Theseus, and Titania, queen of the fairies. Lainie Hart, as her other halves, reprises her dual role as Oberon and Theseus.

Last time around she told me she has no time for gloomy interpretations where the fairies are power-obsessed beings rather than the light-hearted, capricious ones written by the Bard. 

“I just don’t understand why you’d make it dark, it’s a beautiful, silly, wondrous comedy,” she said at the time. 

It’s a good time of year to revive a success, as she has done for several years with her Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and nothing seems more suitable for Christmas than Shakespeare’s frolic in the woods.

Audiences can expect sprinklers, planes flying overhead and all the unpredictability of Aunty Louise Brown Park, where there’ll be only a hammock onstage and actors entering from all directions – no lights, and the show finishing just as it gets dark. 

Best will be using every trick in the book to get the laughs in a play full of tricks and jokes. “It’s brilliantly written,” she says. “It’s accessible, it’s funny, it’s ridiculous.”

Her substantial cast of 21 – “they’re keeping me alive at the moment,” she says – mostly appeared in the 2024 production. Through them she explores the different layers: the fairy world, the Athenian nobles and the Athenian mechanicals.

Jim Adamik reprises his role as Bottom, while Caitlin Baker appears as an exceptionally lovelorn Helena.

For Best, the play is a personal favourite.

“Whether you love Shakespeare or not, it’s accessible and easy to follow. The characters are recognisable, there’s magic, love, ridiculous misunderstandings, and the most magnificently terrible play-within-a-play you’ve ever seen.”

As for performing outdoors, that brings its own fun. 

“You compete with the whole world: cars, birds, wind, insects, picnic snacks. What you present has to be bold or it will disappear into the wonder of nature. That’s what makes it so much fun.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Aunty Louise Brown Park, The Q, December 13-21. Bring a picnic and chairs.