Initially I was a bit worried - Chelsea Walker had decided to pixelate and splice up the script of A Midsummer Night's Dream – perhaps my favourite Shakespeare. But the new kaleidoscopic format is definitely successful. This Dream begins, not with Duke Theseus arbitrating over young Athenians' love lives, but with a great, nihilstic, crimson-eyed Puck (Ollo Clark). The ostensible 'comedy' is shown, in this brutally shortened version, to have the stuff of revenge tragedy and rape fantasy closer to the bone than GCSE students are usually encouraged to perceive.
That said, the crucial Titania/Bottom thread is somewhat lost. Anna Fox as fairy queen got almost nothing to do, whilst an irritating, dully self-absorbed Oberon (Richard Williams) was disproportionately represented. The director's noteworthy interpretation of the problematic 'Tell me how it came this night/ That I sleeping here was found...' moment had almost no dramatic arc behind it. Though this is admittedly a function of the short student slot, there is surely no absolute need to try to cut a Shakespeare play down to an hour to begin with. The loss of fairies and mechanicals, but in particular of Hippolyta, the mirror image of the drugged and conquered Titania, depletes the symbolic framework of the Dream and its ambivalent gendering of nature and culture, lust and contract.
Dream, then, is primarily about humans, whom Puck renders sundered and suffering for his “sport”. Helena (Ruby Thomas) and Hermia (Lindsay Dukes) are the human highlights, although their mates (Alex Khosla and James Corrigan) hold their own. Walker's predilection was clearly for the immortal slapstick of III.2 (“How low am I, thou painted maypole” etc), which is well-polished and pleasing. Helena's abjectness is subtle, a difficult task. Hermia's smugness is well tempered by humour and self-awareness. Syringes (the flower) anoint the eyes to good effect, but it is not clear why the set consists of trash or why the fairy couple wears crappy scraps of paint-bedaubed fabric.
Acting and movement is of a consistently, impressively high calibre. Music and lighting are slick and pleasant. Audience participation is only tokenistically broached - a slight failing. Yet we end, not on Puck's famous epilogue "Give me your hands", which comes earlier in brilliantly bitter tones, but with Bottom's enigmatic intent: “It shall be called Bottom's dream, for it hath no bottom”. Indeed, the lovers in this production lie on the debased “ground” as we rise and leave. They do not awake to insult our intelligence with the farce of happily-ever-after.
That said, the crucial Titania/Bottom thread is somewhat lost. Anna Fox as fairy queen got almost nothing to do, whilst an irritating, dully self-absorbed Oberon (Richard Williams) was disproportionately represented. The director's noteworthy interpretation of the problematic 'Tell me how it came this night/ That I sleeping here was found...' moment had almost no dramatic arc behind it. Though this is admittedly a function of the short student slot, there is surely no absolute need to try to cut a Shakespeare play down to an hour to begin with. The loss of fairies and mechanicals, but in particular of Hippolyta, the mirror image of the drugged and conquered Titania, depletes the symbolic framework of the Dream and its ambivalent gendering of nature and culture, lust and contract.
Dream, then, is primarily about humans, whom Puck renders sundered and suffering for his “sport”. Helena (Ruby Thomas) and Hermia (Lindsay Dukes) are the human highlights, although their mates (Alex Khosla and James Corrigan) hold their own. Walker's predilection was clearly for the immortal slapstick of III.2 (“How low am I, thou painted maypole” etc), which is well-polished and pleasing. Helena's abjectness is subtle, a difficult task. Hermia's smugness is well tempered by humour and self-awareness. Syringes (the flower) anoint the eyes to good effect, but it is not clear why the set consists of trash or why the fairy couple wears crappy scraps of paint-bedaubed fabric.
Acting and movement is of a consistently, impressively high calibre. Music and lighting are slick and pleasant. Audience participation is only tokenistically broached - a slight failing. Yet we end, not on Puck's famous epilogue "Give me your hands", which comes earlier in brilliantly bitter tones, but with Bottom's enigmatic intent: “It shall be called Bottom's dream, for it hath no bottom”. Indeed, the lovers in this production lie on the debased “ground” as we rise and leave. They do not awake to insult our intelligence with the farce of happily-ever-after.