Midsummer
Shakespeare im Park
Mi. 15.07.2020 | 18:30 Uhr
Helena is a divorce lawyer having an unhappy affair with a married man. She drinks too much and feels empty inside. Bob was the golden boy at school who lost his shine as he grew older. His plans of being a writer have come to nothing and now, as his 35th birthday looms, he tells untruths for a living on the fringes of Edinburgh’s criminal fraternity and reads Dostoevsky to cheer himself up.
When Helena and Bob meet in a bar, they embark on a weekend of life-changing transformations in which the city of Edinburgh itself is like the ensnaring and liberating Athenian forest of Shakespeare’s play.
Fragile and funny, but never just cute, Midsummer is that rare beast: a romantic comedy that has a good head on its shoulders as well as a huge heart at its centre. Punctuated by wistful, wry songs full of geographical co-ordinates and maps of the heart, it is emotionally underpinned by the thrilling possibility that we can take our own lives in hand and reinvent ourselves. Even the ticket machine in the Castle car park, where the drunken Helena leaves her vehicle, dispenses philosophical wisdom. Its neon sign flashes: „Change is possible.“