Fairy Queen Lands in Cornwall for One Night Only at Constantine’s Tolmen Centre

What happens to a fairy queen when the forests thin, the seasons stop making sense, and nobody believes in magic any more?

That’s the question at the heart of Titania, a new one-woman show arriving at The Tolmen Centre in Constantine on 8th May.

A Shakespeare Sequel, Four Centuries Late

Set more than 400 years after the events of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the play picks up Titania’s story in our own world. Oberon has disappeared into his own dreams. Puck has slipped into the digital realm. The fairy kingdom has all but vanished, and Titania has fallen through into ours.

She sweeps the theatre floors. She lives off scraps. She watches. And she has taken something she cannot easily give back.

Described as part confessional, part spell, part stand-up, the show moves between mischief and mourning as Titania pieces together what happened after Shakespeare’s ending. It touches on love, loss, ecology, and the instinct to protect what we cannot hold onto.

Cornish Roots

Writer and director Dictynna Hood says the piece grew directly out of time spent in Cornwall.

“Titania emerged from a year on the move, living in Cornwall, attending to the details of the seasons, flowers, gales, floods, woods. It’s a place where the fairy queen might definitely be still living.”

Dictynna’s previous work as a writer-director includes the feature films Us Among the Stones with Anna Calder-Marshall and Wreckers with Claire Foy and Benedict Cumberbatch, the latter of which won the Silver George at Moscow International Film Festival in 2012. She has also written The Selkie for the Wellcome Foundation and is developing a musical called Dr Faustess.

The Woman Playing the Queen

Titania is performed by Nia Gwynne, who trained at RADA and has appeared in BAFTA-winning films Pride and Darkest Hour, as well as TV dramas The Long Call and The Jury. Her theatre work for the Royal Shakespeare Company includes Goneril in King Lear, Tamora in Titus Andronicus and Doll Tearsheet in Henry IV.

“Run towards things that scare you, so I am running full pelt,” Nia said. “Why wouldn’t you want to play the mother of the earth, the Queen of the Fairies?”

She added that the show is built around direct address to the audience.

“It’s storytelling but it’s also a conversation with the audience, it questions what’s happening with us in the world now, and we hope that we can bring it to all sorts of audiences and that we get to open discussion with people all over the country.”

The score is by Manchester-based composer Joy Ingle, who won the 2021 Berwick Music Series’ International Composition Competition and holds an MMus with Distinction from the University of Leeds. Joy’s recent work explores ecomusicology and the idea of decay through sound.

Performance Details

The Constantine performance starts at 7.30pm and runs for approximately one hour 15 minutes with no interval.

After Cornwall, the tour heads to The Lyric Theatre in Bridport on 25th June, The Old Fire Station in Oxford on 28th June, and Park 90 in London on 13th July.

A review of the show’s earlier performances at the Bearpit in Stratford on Avon on 24th and 25th April is available online. Tickets for the Bearpit dates can be booked via the venue’s website or by calling the Box Office on 0333 666 3366.