A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Theatre)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

(Synopsis & Reviews)

Synopsis:
Alan Strachan’s production of Shakespeare’s “Dream” maintained the theatre’s venerable traditions of broad, crowd-pleasing fun – with a cultured, more sophisticated twist. He chose to set the play in an imaginary pastoral Victorian era, bound by ties of filial obedience and fashions of mutton-chop side-burns. Meanwhile, the imaginary world of the fairies was that of the Victorians’ parallel fantasy of a Pre-Raphaelite idyll. In concert with the leafy park, Kit Surrey’s design therefore mixes stately Classicism with organic Romanticism.

Critics’ Reviews: (#1)
The Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park has begun its season with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” directed by Alan Strachan. The theatre itself has been spruced up, thanks to a Lottery grant. The production makes a few gestures towards contemporary fashion (there is a blustery Theseus in the first scene, for instance, and a sourpuss Hippolyta), but it is broadly traditional in its approach, and a delight.

The lovers (Sally Hawkins, Sarah Tansey, Chris Larkin, Tam Williams) are fresh and engaging, and get quite as much humour out of their lines and their facial expressions as they do out of their scamperings. Harry Burton (who doubles as Theseus) is a sardonic Oberon, though he also rises to the poetry of the part in such magical speeches as “We are spirits of another sort“.

Paul Bradley is hilarious as Bottom; there is an outstanding Puck, with more than a hint of anger and real wildness, from Paul Kemp. And then there are Michael Medwin as Robin Starveling the tailor and Craig Parkinson as a lanky Francis Flute – but this is one of those happy productions where you want to give everyone a prize. ~ John Gross, The Sunday Telegraph 18/6/00

Critics’ Reviews: (#2)
WHEN the reconstruction of Shakespeare’s Globe opened on Bankside, some feared that it might be curtains for the Open Air Theatre. In fact the Regent’s Park venue remains deservedly popular, and on a balmy summer night (remember them?) the place conjures up a holiday humour that is well-nigh irresistible.

The season opens, as it so often does, with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” The first night coincided, miraculously, with the kind of perfect summer evening that old men write about in their memoirs. As dusk fell and the leaves rustled in the breeze, Alan Strachan’s attentive, intelligent production often seemed to capture the very essence of a play that works magically out of doors.

He has set the action in high-Victorian times, with a bewhiskered Theseus looking remarkably like Prince Albert, the girls in preposterous crinolines, and the conquered Hippolyta seething with outraged indignation at the autocratic, male-dominated world in which she reluctantly finds herself.

The formality of the court is well suggested by Kit Surrey’s design of a vast, elaborate staircase, though it’s a shame that it is too bulky to be removed for the more unbuttoned scenes in the Athenian wood -literarily unbuttoned in the case of Helena and Hermia.

It is fashionable these days to stress the darkness of the “Dream,” and its disturbing psychosexual undercurrents. Strachan makes a nod to this – the night air is sometimes punctuated by disembodied diabolical laughter, Paul Kemp makes a particularly malevolent, faun-like Puck, and Nicola Redmond’s voracious Titania has a hungry sensuality.

Redmond plays Hippolyta too, just as Harry Burton doubles as Theseus and Oberon. It’s a familiar device these days, but one that still potently suggests that the middle section of the play is a dreamlike examination of the sexual fantasies and fears of the Athenian nobility.

For the most part though, Strachan concentrates on the warmth and sheer fun of the piece. The scenes involving the mechanicals are played with a beautiful mixture of affection and whimsicality that puts one in mind of Hardy at his most mellow.

Paul Bradley is a delightful, bumpkinish Bottom (and his ass’s head is a triumph), Timothy Kightley a lovely, nervy Peter Quince, while the very sight of Michael Medwin’s shy, dignified Robin Starveling, who seems to be suffering bravely from piles, brings a smile to the face.

The lovers are played with terrific brio. Tam Williams‘ dashingly handsome Lysander and Chris Larkin’s silly-ass Demetrius are both winning performances, but it’s the rueful poignancy of Sarah Tansey’s Helena, and the indignation of Sally Hawkins‘ tiny Hermia, clinging desperately to her lover like a demented koala, that bring a potent mixture of high comedy and real pain to the show.

This is the perfect location and the ideal production with which to introduce children to Shakespeare, although, with an eight o’clock start and a three-hour running time, an afternoon siesta would probably be advisable. ~ Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph 14/6/00

Critics’ Reviews: (#3)
The most distinguishing features of Strachan’s production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are the clarity of the language and the delineation of the characters. The four archetypal lovers who elope to the woods therefore emerge as well-rounded, engaging individuals. Tam Williams‘ Lysander and Chris Larkin’s Demetrius are, respectively, Byronic and stuffy sorts, while Sally Hawkins is a bossy, girly Hermia and Sarah Tansey is a self-pitying tragedian of a Helena. All four are shorn of their fancy weeds and civic dignity as they are launched on an emotional and physical assault course.

Harry Burton is a gloriously self-important Theseus who fancies his taste for oratory will woo Nicola Redmond as his bolshy betrothed.

As usual, the pair double up as Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, and if Burton becomes comparatively earnest, Redmond becomes a wild, lubricious, tongue-wiggling voluptuary.

Hungrily tossing a thick mane of red ringlets, it is her lot to drool over Paul Bradley’s Bottom – crowned by a superb donkey mask complete with blinking eyes and sexually twitching ears.

The other rustics are no less full of hearty invention, and the play’s shadow side is carried alone by Paul Kemp’s sardonic, petulant, sometimes angry Puck.

But overall this is a production which banishes shadows and is as light and diaphanous as the fabric of Shakespeare’s play itself. ~ Patrick Marmion, Evening Standard 13/6/00

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