Review: Bottom's Dream by Martin O'Connor - A Play, A Pie and A Pint
A blend of Shakespeare and Scots language are used to tell the tale of a struggling working class actor in this week's delightful show Bottom's Dream at A Play A Pie and A Pint. Read my review here.
Bottom's Dream ★★★★☆
Review: 13 October 2026 | Òran Mór, Glasgow
Nick Bottom has always wanted to be an actor. Yet he has followed his working-class family's footsteps into the trade as a weaver. His dream of being on stage has never left him though, so he's started taking acting night classes and going to auditions.
Written by and starring Scots poet and performer Martin O'Connor (writer and star of National Theatre Scotland's Through the Shortbread Tin), Bottom's Dream reimagines one of Shakespeare's most loved characters as a struggling actor. A Scottish, working-class actor who is told outright by those assessing him that he will never play a romantic lead, but he could maybe play a thug... or a junkie. Such is the prejudice he faces trying to enter an industry run by those who see him as a joke, a donkey, an ass.
In his A Play, A Pie and A Pint debut, O'Connor deftly blends characters and text from Shakespeare's comedy Midsummer Night's Dream with his own Scots language poetry and a compelling original story that explores class, language, prejudice and ambition.
Full of perceptive observations and sharp comedy, Bottom's Dream provides a penetrating look at the audition process, but it's also an incisive commentary on what it's like to try to break into a corporate job, to a new social group or to do anything ambitious while being working-class. It's often hilarious, but it also takes a few brilliantly sudden dark turns.
O'Connor is wonderfully charismatic throughout. On stage alone for the hour, he expertly holds the audience's attention with his superb delivery and expert comic timing. Coupled with Debbie Hannan's intuitive direction, the pair make this 60-minute solo spoken-word performance a vibrant, dynamic piece of theatre. Hannan's trust in O'Connor is clear; his storytelling and movement feel natural, and his rhythmic, intuitive delivery of the words is almost melodic.
Bottom's Dream is a thoroughly entertaining and engaging hour at A Play, A Pie and A Pint and an incisive, devastatingly accurate swipe at class culture within the arts. ★★★★☆
Bottom's Dream plays at Glasgow's Oran Mor from 12-17 October and then at the Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh from 20-24 October.
Martin O’Connor said:
"I’m delighted to be making my A Play, A Pie and A Pint debut with Bottom’s Dream. The Mechanicals have stayed with me ever since I played Flute / Thisbe in Giles Havergal's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Citizens many years ago. Bottom, like other working-class characters, speaks only in prose, so here I have written his speech in iambic pentameter – but in Scots. I wanted to give Bottom not only the poetry he has been denied, but a language and voice that is fully his own, and the stage he deserves."
Where to see Bottom's Dream at A Play, A Pie and A Pint
Òran Mór, Glasgow, G12 8QX
Mon 12 - Sat 17 October 2026, 1pm
Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, G12 8QX
Tue 20 - Sat 24 October 2026, 1pm
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