A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – ROYAL SHAKESPEARE COMPANY, RST STRATFORD, SATURDAY 29TH OCTOBER 2011
Long awaited and booked as soon as Charles Spencer’s ecstatic review of the ‘Dream’ appeared after the first performance in July, we trekked to Stratford-upon-Avon for the full Shakespeare experience. It was high praise indeed to suggest that Nancy Meckler's production was a new dawn of MND productions in the same mould as the groundbreaking Peter Brook ‘Dream’ of 1970. After some research, we decided on a background walk the day before, taking us from Snitterfield over the Welcombe Hills, where Shakespeare is thought to have purchased the rights to some tithes with money earned from his theatrical life in London. There is documentary evidence of a dispute over inclosure of common land, though precisely what happened is unclear. David Hare, of course, given his political leanings, decided that Shakespeare must be the villainous landlord of the piece in his play ‘Bingo’, and it was hard not to shout Bingo, every time we came upon some neatly clipped yews or some Elizabethan half timbered cottages...
It’s some years since I was last at the RST, and opening this year, the theatre has had a £100M refit. Although we booked nearly three months ago and tried for the best seats, we weren’t particularly disappointed to get seats in the third row of the circle. We discovered that the new circle only has three rows, and the back row, or seat C69, where I was billeted, was constructed along the lines of an Elizabethan torture device. The perch was high, difficult to get up and down from, and on levelling the seat, a mechanism beneath brings a metal grille underneath the feet, providing that one doubles one’s feet back underneath. It would truly be more comfortable standing up, and this opinion is endorsed by contributors to the website ‘What’s On Stage’. In addition, the fixed spotlights are a distraction and limit the view of the upper part of the set. The heat that they produce is intense so that it feels as though one is in the top part of an old fashioned oven, without the benefit of the fan assistance. Looking down at the stalls one is struck by how few seats there are. Reading an interview with the architect of the development, it emerges that the old theatre meant that some of the audience were as much as 30m from the stage, whereas the revamp has halved the maximum distance. I address these words to all those who suffer seat C69 in future: the number may conjure up visions of sexual contortion – but believe me it will not be a pleasurable experience. £100M – and it’s awful. Other friends sitting in the circle a little further round had an even more limited view.
This preamble should have been about the play, the production, the players, but sadly it hasn’t. When stretched upon the rack of seat C69, it’s hard to feel magical, but I certainly tried.
The cast tried hard too, and at times they succeeded.
Having been to a Tristan and Isolde this year which seemed to be located on a rather utilitarian cross channel ferry, I was not unprepared for a set which seemed to be in some sort of speakeasy warehouse, with metal doors and fire escapes. In contrast to Charles Spencer’s opinion, the production does not create a rival to the Brook ‘Dream’, rather it builds on it. The set is mostly white, as in 1970; the famous swing is there, and some of the costumes are borrowed from the sixties. When one reads the names of the actors involved in the great RSC productions of the past, Alan Howard, Sara Kestelman, Ian Holm, Ian Richardson, David Warner, Diana Rigg, Helen Mirren, Frances de la Tour, Patrick Stewart, Ben Kingsley, it’s hard not to ask oneself if today’s actors will achieve these heights. Well, I’m not sure. During the performance I saw, Lucy Briggs-Owen was indisposed, and Amanda Wilkin, one of the fairies played the role – and well. It is demanding, with long speeches of pleading and bewilderment, which test our powers of sympathy to the utmost. It was a shame not to see Lucy Briggs-Owen because Charles Spencer particularly praised her. What of the rest of the cast? Whether it was the theatre, my location (Circle C69 in case you’ve forgotten), or an insistence on estuary English rather than received pronunciation, there does seem to be a problem with diction in modern Shakespearian thesps. Egeus was incomprehensible; Theseus proved to me that it was the third of these three problems which bedevil comprehension. As a London autocrat (gang boss, nightclub owner, footballer – it was never made clear) he was difficult to understand. Doubling as Oberon, however, he proved to be the revelation of the night, his beautiful verse speaking of some of the most poetic lines of the play making one sigh with pleasure. Jo Stone-Fewings (one might have thought he would adopt a more mellifluous stage name) was the actor concerned. Hippolyta/Titania (Pippa Nixon) was a pleasure to watch and listen to as well. She was a genuinely beautiful queen, with astonishing blue eyes, and clear and perfectly paced verse speaking skills. It would be harsh to pick on some of the other cast members, and sometimes the fault appeared to lie with the director. Whoever thought that it would be a good idea to make Thisbe speak in a shrieking female voice which rendered the lines incomprehensible? Why did the fairies speak like Terry Jones in ‘The Life of Brian?’ Marc Wootton who played Bottom however clearly has a future as a comic actor of great conviction.
Charles Spencer spoke of the set as like a 60s trip. Presumably he meant the multicoloured steel office chairs which descended from above the stage during some but not all of the scenes in the wood. But the most effective scene was where the lovers, struggling to negotiate the forest at night, were intercepted by the sprites and spirits of the wood in the most balletic fashion as they tried to make their way diagonally across the stage.
My companions at the evening were unhappy that Puck was not small and mischievous, though I note that Brook’s Puck, John Kane, appeared tall, at least in the historic cast photos. Arsher Ali has great promise – and was audible. One of the dissenters has had her world view of Puck fixed forever by a magical experience at Oxford, as Puck appeared, diminutive and mischievous, from the top of the Tudor mound at New College, some time in the 1970s. We all agreed how effective it is to double the roles of Theseus/Oberon and Hippolyta/Titania. The dream world selves of the King and Queen become so much more credible as reincarnations of their Athenian alter egos, and their resumption of a more reasonable state of mind and behaviour becomes a resolution of their quarrels in the dreamland of the wood. In fact, it was Peter Brook who introduced this device. It seems strange that it took 370 years to discover how effective it could be. Given the possibly smaller casts available at the time of first performances however, this may have been the norm in the early 1600s. So overall, a very enjoyable ‘Dream’, not quite ground-breaking, and less a dream than something of a nightmare for the groundlings in Row C.
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