If you only go to one Shakespeare production in Stratford-upon-Avon this year, go to see A Midsummer Night's Dream.
There are several excellent productions in the Royal Shakespeare Company 2011 repertoire, but for sheer unabashed entertainment, director Nancy Meckler's interpretation of the Dream is a feel-good delight.
The ancient Athens in which the play is set has a 1960s London gangster look, like Shakespeare had collaborated with Guy Ritchie. The men wear sharp suits and some of the women have beehive hair-dos in the style of the late Amy Winehouse. Most of the characters adopt broad London accents, which thankfully does away with that tired old conceit of making the tradesmen Brummies.
The look becomes more magical in a surreal dream-like way when the action moves to a forest created from suspended chairs and the fairies come out to play, with gorgeous lighting by Wolfgang Göbb and vampiric hissing from a Brides of Dracula fairy trio who accompany the fairy queen Titania.
Doubling their roles as the Duke of Athens Theseus/fairy king Oberon and the duke's Amazon bride Hippolyta/Titania, Jo Stone-Fewings and Pippa Nixon make a passionate warring couple. There is something about Stone-Fewings, his perfect clipped diction, his casual yet authorative air, that demands attention. In contrast, Arsher Ali as the sprite Puck lacks charisma or that dangerous hint of meddling menace. The audience warms to him, but he fails to make full use of his lanky frame. His casual Puck seems perfunctory.
The Magic and The Lovers
At the core of the play are the two sets of lovers and how their affections are swopped by fairy magic. This causes utter confusion for poor put-upon Helena, who suspects all of mocking her. Bristling with energy, Lucy Briggs-Owen gives a break-out, brilliant performance, both extremely funny and poignant (two parts Joyce Grenfell to one part Vanessa Redgrave), as the long-limbed spurned lover who finds herself pursued by lovesick youths. As her former friend, the petite Hermia, Matti Houghton very much lives up to the description: "though she be but little, she is fierce."
Their male suitors, good as they are, cannot escape being eclipsed by the forceful, frenetic females. Nathaniel Martello-White as Lysander sometimes croons his lines like a soul singer to woo Hermia. Alex Hassell as Demetrius goes from dour to amusingly silly as a kung fu kicking buffoon.
The Mechanicals
I doubt the new-look Royal Shakespeare Theatre has before been rocked by so much laughter as when the rude mechanicals, here portrayed as a bunch of odd job men, put on their disastrous play within a play, The Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. This is largely due to comic actor Marc Wootton, who memorably plays Nick Bottom as an over-bearing amateur thespian whose final performance is hammier than a side of bacon. In his transformation into an ass, it was more his grotesque walk and ear-splitting hee-haw than the bad-hair-day donkey ears and swinging salami sausage between his legs that suggested his monstrous makeover by the mischievous Puck.
The performance lasted nearly three hours and the time flew by thanks to Meckler's crowd-pleasing production.
The Dream continues in repertoire at Stratford until November 5.
Leon Burakowski - A British journalist based in central England with 28 years experience in newspapers. Writes about travel, theatre, technology, history, ...
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