Touring companies try to economise as much as they can on their productions. This is understandable, though sometimes – especially when cast numbers are greatly reduced – aesthetically unfortunate.
It was bringing this fine classic far too close to the world of panto
However, when this economy is allied with the dumbing down of classics, the production becomes not quite acceptable.
I criticised this very point when I reviewed the Globe Theatre’s touring production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and now I find TNT’s production of the same comedy (which was held at San Anton Gardens) even worse in this respect.
Paul Stebbings’ direction of this open-air production extends the broad farce of the Mechanicals and their Pyramus and Thisbe, and the fairy Puck’s comic antics, to much of the rest of the play. Thus, the realistic comicality of the four lovers – Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena – is transformed into farce, often very broad indeed.
Oberon, that aristocrat of the fairy world, becomes even more farcical than Puck. He is subjected, for the sake of what used to be called ‘the groundlings’, to humiliations that include being urinated upon while he invisibly observes what the lovers are doing.
While Bottom the Weaver is a figure of farce and nothing else, his sexual encounter with the fairy queen Titania (which happens while he is wearing a donkey’s head) is an encounter between aristocratic elegance and coarse animalism.
Luckily Noa Bodner, playing Titania, was one of the few members of the cast who did not succumb to the great temptations of farcical acting and so enabled the audience to see that, despite the magic spell put on her by Oberon, her true personality was not entirely submerged.
Making the cast pronounce the odd word or phrase in Maltese did produce a guffaw from some members of the audience, but for me it was bringing this fine classic far too close to the world of panto.
Having the same actor play Theseus and Oberon is commonplace, but Eric Tessier-Lavigne in this production plays not just these two parts but also Peter Quince in the scenes of the Mechanicals. This meant that in the final scene, when the Mechanicals perform their play before Theseus and Hippolyta, Theseus has to absent himself without giving a reason for several minutes.
Tessier-Lavigne comes back to play Quince, leaves the stage again and finally resumes his performance as Theseus. This means that he leaves Hippolyta as the sole member of the audience for a good part of the ‘play within the play’, since the actors playing Demetrius and Hermia (two of the four lovers meant to be viewing the play) are also playing Bottom and Flute, both of whom play important, farcical roles in the play within the play.
Fortunately, the Mechanicals, led by a richly farcical James Burton as Bottom/Pyramus and Maeve Leavy as an embarrassed Flute/Thisbe make the play within the play enjoyable, even though it suffers from the fact that much of the preceding action is often just as farcical.
Bottom is even funnier in the rehearsal scenes and, of course, in the donkey-head scenes. Burton turns him into the quintessence of the worst amateur actor, who is regarded by his fellow actors as the leading actor of the company, and makes him get most of the laughs in these scenes. Burton doubles as the lover Demetrius, a part which does not really take off for him.
Of the four lovers, Hermia and Helena certainly do better than the men. Stebbings has cleverly cast the tall and slim Rebecca Naylor as Helena and the much smaller Maeve Leahy as Hermia, making all the insults about Helena’s being a “painted maypole” and Hermia’s being a “dwarf” or an “acorn” more immediately comprehensible than they are in other productions. Both actors bring out the two young women’s fears and erotic obsessions very vividly and Naylor makes Helena into a delightfully comical masochist, especially in the early scenes.
We first see Tessier-Lavigne and Bodner in a prologue added by the director showing how Theseus had captured Hippolyta in battle and then made her his bride. This scene is far from being great theatre, but it serves to show Hippolyta as a proto-feminist who helps Hermia escape the fate of death or perpetual nunnery imposed on her by Theseus.
Tessier-Lavigne is better as Theseus than as Oberon. This was a pity as this actor showed that he can speak verse quite nobly in his great scene with Puck. As Lysander, Dominic Brewer was often two-dimensional and was much happier as the mischievous, likeable and nimble Puck.
Like most contemporary Shakespeare productions, this one uses contemporary dress for the human characters, with grander costumes for Theseus and Hippolyta. The fairy characters wear colourful costumes in traditional fairy styles. Paul Flush’s attractive music often counteracts the unmagical atmosphere of the woodland scenes.