A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
Shakespeare's Globe, London SE1
/ Courtyard Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
Opened 21 / 15 May, 2008
**** / *****
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream is the Shakespeare for everyone, and the
linchpin of many a company’s summer schedule. Consequently, for critics
who have seen an average of two or more Dreams a year since some time last
century, it is easy to get jaded. However, both of 2008’s major
revivals so far are corkers.
In Stratford, the RSC have revived Gregory Doran’s production, first
seen in 2005 and, I suspect, perhaps an unconscious influence on Globe
director Jonathan Munby. In both productions, the quartet of Athenian
lovers gradually lose their clothes as the night of confusion
progresses: for Munby, they shuck off their formal black to reveal
livelier colours beneath, whereas Doran exposes more and more flesh as
their desires hurtle out of control. In both, the fairies stalking the
action are quite punky, although in Stratford there is both more Lycra
and much more stalking, as they provide a mocking choric commentary on
the mortals’ mishaps. And in both, a huge globular moon hangs over
performers and audience alike; it is as if Mike Britton at the outdoor
Globe did not trust God to provide His own. However, some elements may
simply be in general contemporary currency for stagings of the play;
for instance, Michael Boyd’s earlier RSC production was the first I had
seen to make explicit the filthy jokes we had all imagined in the rude
mechanicals’ play-within-a-play, such as the references to kissing the
wall’s “stones” and its/his “hole”, a policy gleefully followed by both
Doran and Munby.
Peter de Jersey and Andrea Harris are an imperious Oberon and Titania
at Stratford, with de Jersey perhaps overusing the richness of his
voice. In contrast, Tom Mannion and Siobhan Redmond at the Globe play
the mortal Theseus and Hippolyta in Received Pronunciation and revert
to their native Scots accents as the fairy king and queen; Mannion, in
particular, makes great play of the informal-sounding cadences of
Glaswegian to undercut many of his lines. (The roles are not doubled in
the RSC production.) The Globe’s Puck, Michael Jibson, is an
enthusiastic mischief-maker; Mark Hadfield in Stratford is both
unusually old for the role and less comfortable cackling puckishly than
in sardonic or deadpan mode – an unusual approach, but one he uses to
tremendous effect.
In the central scene in which the young lovers find their affections
spun every which way, the Globe’s actors go for high-speed frenzy, and
do it well. However, they are quite eclipsed by their Stratford
counterparts, who give probably the best rendition I have seen of this
episode. It is a particular joy to see the constant ambivalence in
Natalie Walter’s liberated librarian of a Helena: she so wants to
believe Demetrius’s new protestations of love, but keeps telling
herself that it must be a trick, yet begins to luxuriate naughtily in
the attention anyway.
As for the Bottom line: Joe Dixon’s lumpish, Brummie-accented Bottom,
with a full ass’s head magically added, is so confident in himself that
he almost matches the clowning expertise of Paul Hunter at the Globe.
Hunter knows that he need not always go large, and some gags work
better when thrown away; but when he goes for it, as he does with
Bottom/Pyramus’s death in the mechanicals’ playlet, he is a comedy
typhoon. Nevertheless, I do not think I would have responded as I did
at the Globe if Doran’s Stratford production had not first re-awakened
my wonder and delight in the play. A colleague once told me, “A
four-star show is excellent in every way; a five-star show is a
four-star show plus magic.” This pair of sweet Dreams are a perfect example.