![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.benjeapes.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/nightdreamers.jpg\" "\\"nightdreamers\\"")
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Tom Arden – Nightdreamers Deep in a forest, a group of mismatched lower class artisans rehearse a play in which one of them must take the part of a wall. Elsewhere we find a young woman forcibly betrothed to one man though she loves another, and her beloved hexed by an impish little fellow into falling in love with someone else. One of the actors has a head like a monster. And it\u2019s Perihelion Night.<\/p>\n Tom Arden takes on A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream and wins. Rather than slavishly follow the Bard\u2019s plot he mixes and matches, reworking it into an early 70s Third Doctor\/Jo Grant era Who adventure. We start with only three cross-matched lovers; Jo herself rounds up the quartet, still pining after Latep, the Thal with bad 70s hair that she didn\u2019t follow back to Skaro. The lovers are all given far more character than Shakespeare ever managed — you can actually tell them apart. We recognise some of the roles — Puck, the Rude Mechanicals — and some of the scenes, but there is no sinking feeling of \u201cthere\u2019s the guy with the funny head, now it must be time for the wrong man to get the love drug.\u201d Instead the streamlined version of the play is mixed in with other Shakespearean elements (the Duke owes more to Prospero than Theseus) and an enjoyably Whoish plot of rival planets and politics, a castle that\u2019s really a spaceship, black-leather-clad bad guys, and a closing scene straight out of the well-hardest sf you\u2019re likely to find.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just a fun story but it\u2019s told with obvious love and affection for the Who era in which it is set. The story takes place on Verd, a small, forested moon. The setting is small even by the story\u2019s own frame of reference and Arden uses only a few scenes, so it\u2019s no difficulty at all for your mind\u2019s eye to set the whole thing within your old black and white TV that took 30 seconds to warm up, on a dark Saturday evening back in 1973. You can even picture the BBC sets.<\/p>\n The gravity on Verd is highly variable, meaning that characters are likely to find themselves bouncing or even flying at any moment. The short novella length of the story means that the plot rattles along, barely giving the reader or the characters time for breath; there is an over-arching logic to the whole thing but you never notice. It just makes sense at the time. Puck\u2019s valedictory \u201cIf we shadows have offended …\u201d rhyme has never been more appropriate: it really is like a dream.<\/p>\n \u00a325 is steep for a novella hardback, but a \u201cstandard\u201d version is also available at \u00a310.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Tom Arden – Nightdreamers Telos, 2002, 112pp, \u00a325, 1-903889-07-3 Deep in a forest, a group of mismatched lower class artisans rehearse a play in which one of them must take the part of a wall. Elsewhere we find a young … Continue reading
\nTelos, 2002, 112pp, \u00a325, 1-903889-07-3
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