Thursday 10 February 2011

Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream, Nuffield Theatre, Tuesday 8 February 2011


Originally written for The Public Reviews.

Successfully reconfiguring a classic is never an easy task, so Headlong Theatre’s bold re-imagining of one of Shakespeare’s best loved plays had its work cut out. In this innovative new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Bard’s comedy of angst-ridden lovers and mischievous fairies is resituated to 1960s Hollywood, where director Robin Goodfellow is concluding the shooting of his new movie whilst off-screen romance blossoms between stars Theseus and Hippolyta.

The intoxicating glamour of studio-era Hollywood has a certain resonance with the fairy-dust sprinkled world of Puck and Oberon and in the opening scenes, following a clever opening credits projection that neatly establishes the premise, this production’s fresh and fun concept brims with promise. Putting Puck in the director’s chair is an ingenious device that allows for an implicit questioning of the process of creating and observing drama, while confirming the impish rogue as the true overlord of the comic chaos. Sandy Grierson diverges from the traditional route of playing Puck as an excitable, other-worldly bundle of mischief and instead lends him a jaded movie director’s sardonic edge in what is a refreshingly novel interpretation of the character.

In embracing the updated setting, director Natalie Abrahami has taken the opportunity for playful manipulation of the text. The surreal incorporation of songs into the scenes provides some of the production’s most entertaining moments, while the dreamlike elements occasionally slide into the downright bizarre. Whether it is fairies in 3D glasses munching on popcorn or impromptu musical routines, this production continually surprises, delights and perplexes. Credit must go also to movement director Georgina Lamb, who has constructed an engagingly kinetic interpretation of the script that exploits the comedy to its full potential.

The cast take interesting approaches to characters that can easily become rehashed stereotypes, adding extra facets to these well known roles. Christopher Logan as pompous would-be thespian Bottom and Michael Dylan as an excitable Flute bring out the flamboyant theatricality of these hapless aspiring actors rather than emphasising the buffoonery of the labouring class mechanicals against the wit and intelligence of the aristocratic leads. Logan prances about the stage flaunting his dubious performing skills to any available audience, while Dylan has a hilarious, scene-stealing turn as a pouting Thisbe.

From the remaining solid performances, Max Bennett and Oliver Kieran-Jones as Demetrius and Lysander respectively deserve a mention for their skilful comic handling of the characters’ bewitched affection for Helena, making quite the double act. Deirdre Mullins also impresses as a decidedly gutsy Helena, endowing the spurned lover with a greater helping of scorn than despair. In contrast with more vulnerable portrayals, Mullins has an appealing flinty edge that is nicely suited to this modern updating.

Unfortunately, however, accomplished performances, adept handling of the comedy and an abundance of inventive touches do not ultimately save Headlong’s concept from a lack of cohesion. While the 1960s Hollywood glamour is convincingly evoked, the setting and text do not always make comfortable bedfellows. Headlong and the Nuffield are to be applauded for their attempt to achieve a cutting edge make-over of a much revived work, but the end result does not feel as radical as it promises to be and while it is undoubtedly fun, this interpretation never quite finds its voice.


2 comments:

  1. Having seen this production, the acting was great (barring some incoherent lines), but this doesn’t save the overall impression being somewhat of a let down.

    The issue was the execution of the concept.

    The idea of setting the play on a 60′s film set sounded intriguing, and worked well up to the end of the second scene. However, once the play shifts to the wood, or is it backstage on the set (who knows, it wasn’t clear whether the props were meant to be a metaphor for the forest or reality), it all seemed to become a traditional Midsummer Night’s Dream.

    I was hoping somewhere that the magic of film might somehow be used to replace the magic of the faeries, using Puck as a director, rather than as a supernatural entity, or at least somehow work in a justification for setting this on a film set.

    OK. Fair enough, if you read the programme you can read a section on the power of Liz Taylor and Richard Burton’s relationship on the set of Cleopatra, but other than the initial movie clip on stage as the play opened, there was no real use of this concept in the production. The programme should not be the only place where a concept becomes alive and relevant.

    It is interesting to read elsewhere the director's view of the production, and I think it would be useful to include it in the programme, as the staging certainly didnt make it clear that Puck was the dream alter ego of Robin Goodfellow. Robin Goodfellow's dream needed to be more explicitly signposted as a dream, rather than simply night-time.

    It is interesting that Natalie says "our ideas worked for two of the three worlds, but that the solution to all three of them kept eluding us". Well having watched the production, it still seemed that how to handle certain aspects eluded them. It wasnt wasnt at all clear that the mechanicals play was to be performed at the wrap party. Maybe there was some dialogue to suggest this (not all all the dialogue was clearly spoken, particularly where American accents were added) or maybe the director expected us to all just "get it".

    I think the production was seriously limited by the way it stuck to the original Shakespearean dialogue. I felt to make this production work, they needed to step off the path leading to mirky Athenian woods, and lose themselves in the magic of Hollywood. I am reminded here of the brilliant Faustus that Headlong put on a few years back, and would dearly love to watch again / instead. Here Marlowe wasn’t slavishly followed, there was a collision of worlds where Marlowe was fused with the story of the Chapman Brothers, and I feel that Headlong could have drawn on the innovative way that Marlowe was adapted to do something more thrilling with this Dream concept.

    A company that produced Faustus should have done so much better with this idea. Rather than just wafting a fan towards the Cleopatra film set, and dropping back into a trad Dream where the faeries collect their herbs and do their magic, I would have loved to see Puck as Film Director, but as a magical character in a modern realm: a Mephisto, a Mesmer, where the cast do his bidding. Yes there were hints of this with couples in the world waking to Puck with a click of his fingers, but to make this work, I feel they needed to break free of the play and make their own adaptation after Shakespeare.

    As soon as Robin Goodfellow became Puck, and he became a faerie, then the coherence of the production seemed to fall apart. Instead of faeries in the modern world we landed straight back into an Athenian wood with a thump.

    We needed to see a lot more of Robin Goodfellow Director, and explore more of the relationship between Theseus and Hippolyta to make the film set concept work.

    I would personally have taken the doubling of Theseus / Oberon and Hippolyta / Titania to its logical conclusion and merged the roles and adapted the play accordingly, allowing the whole play to exist in the film set.

    Rupert Goold is a hard act to follow, and this production fails to match him...

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  2. Thanks for such a detailed and articulate response, it's very interesting to hear what someone else made of the production and I agree with a lot of the points you make. I was intrigued by the concept but it just never quite lived up to my expectations unfortunately.

    I also read the director's comments about the production (in the Guardian I think?) and that did illuminate the concept in some respects so it would have definitely been helpful to have that included in the programme, although a truly successful concept shouldn't need explaining.

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