Basically Revenge of the Amazons is a re-take on Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream written by Jean Betts in Wellington in 1983 but set up against the world of 1970s Wellington.  It is directed by Tony McCaffrey and performed by students in their third year of study at NASDA.

We are setting it in 2009 in a culture obsessed with appearance as identity, metrosexuality, narcissistic Facebook and avatars of who we want to be in Second Life and other fantasy role-plays.  The play contains several different worlds colliding and confusing each other.  The world of the Fairies - Oberon Titania and Puck, the world of the lovers, a self-conscious Helena, a small Hermia and Demetrius and Lysander who are probably as interested in each other as they are in the females and the world of the Rude Mechanicals - in Jean's play the Fallopian Thespians - a feminist theatre group of NZ in the 1970s.  There is gender role-reversal, gender confusion and the magic love-potion Rata which causes the King of the Fairies Oberon to fall in love with Barb a rough and ready Kiwi Sheila in a kind of Bunny Girl costume.  The whole thing is played with the intensity and pace of pantomime and is very funny.   The play is about body image and gender image and what happens when our preconceptions and stereotypes are overturned and subverted.  

Revenge of the Amazons opens in the NASDA Theatre, E Block on CPIT’s Madras Street Campus on Saturday June 6^th at 7.30pm and plays nightly at 7.30pm until Thursday June 11^th with a matinee performance on Sunday June 7^th at 4pm.

SOME ADULT CONTENT MAY OFFEND

Tickets at $12 and $18 available by calling Sharon on 940 8063. If your school group would like to attend a week-day performance, please contact this number also.