Annie Zaidi relishes a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, produced by Elysium Theatre and directed by Dan Bradford as part of Durham Shakespeare Festival.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream has been staged, adapted and loved all over the world. Interpreted in dozens of languages and styles, the play appears to lend itself easily to all cultures, as if it were written by a familiar. Audiences have long been amused by its love triangles and quadrangles, the power tussles embedded in sexual relationships, and the author’s friendly poke at theatre-makers who lean into tragedy without necessarily having the training, sensibility or the resources for it.
When the life of a play stretches so far across time and space, there remains little room for doubt about its textual merit. However, it does pose the question: how should a play be produced when it is so well known and so well loved? Elysium Theatre Company, while celebrating the 400th Anniversary of the publication of the First Folio of the complete works of Shakespeare, has responded to the question by reintroducing audiences to the original flavours of the text in its latest production in Durham. It captures the litheness of spirit, the surrender to bemusement and to the vagaries of love in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, as well as the performance of love as unintended comedy. However, the play has acquired an additional rambunctiousness thanks to the physical comedy employed by the actors as they leap, twist, feint, roll about and wrestle on stage.
The costume design is congruous to both fairy and mortal, to ancient times as well as modern. Loose tunics sync well with the characters of all genders, being unfussy and malleable enough to allow actors to slide out of one character and into the next, with ease. The sound and light design are also noteworthy in that these remain unobtrusive, except to suggest the passage of time or ethereality during the enchantment or ‘dream’ scenes. The stage design is especially commendable. It smoothly aligns a woodsy, faery realm with medieval conceptions of ancient Greece – or, perhaps, to an ageless environment where love is always at odds with power. The green vines stretched across the stage not only indicate a separation of forest and court, of dream and wakefulness, but also serve as an aide to comedy.
The actors’ joie de vivre rubs off on the audience, particularly in the second half, when the comedy of confusion caused by the enchantment of Lysander and Demetrius gives way to the comedy of an inept staging of a tragedy by the Mechanicals. The only vexing notes, perhaps, are moments when the actors either race through the dialogue or overwhelm it with expressions of chaos and excitement. Words must remain at the centre of a performance, unless their omission and suppression were a conscious dramatic choice. No matter how well known the play, it is unwise to assume that all audience members are familiar with the dialogue. Nonetheless, what is lost in tumult is more than made up in enthusiasm and talent. The actors’ enjoyment of the text is infectious, and each of them seeks out a peculiar emphasis or a distinct manner to reveal the depth and range of Shakespeare’s inspiration. Overall, this is an enjoyable production of a perennial favourite, entertaining to the last minute.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs from 19th July in Durham’s Assembly Rooms, Bishop Auckland Town Hall, and Palace Green. Elysium Theatre Company’s parallel production, Macbeth, returns to Palace Green on 26th July.
Featured image credit: Jake Rusby
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