Peter Viney's Blog

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By William Shakespeare

Directed by Sean Holmes
Designed by Jean Chan
Composer James Fortune

Shakespeare’s Globe, London

Wednesday 28th August 2019, 13.00

CAST:

Peter Bourke – Theseus / Oberon
Rachel Hannah Clark- Snug / Peaseblossom
Victoria Elliot – Titania / Hippolyta
Jocelyn Jee Esien – Bottom
Nadine Higgin – Quince / Egeus / Cobweb
Ciaran O’Brien – Demetrius
Faith Omole – Hermia
Ekow Quartey – Lysander
Billy Seymour- Flute . Mustardseed
Amanda Wilkin – Helena|
Jacoba Williams – Snout / Moth

All of us – Puck
One of You- Starveling

MUSIC
Ed Ashby – tuba
Olly Blackman – drums
Steve Pretty = MD, trumpet, orchestration
Steve Thompson – trombone
Ollie Weston – saxophone

Victoria Elliot as Titania

I said it on the Bartholomew Fair review, but the Globe’s ludicrous “equality cast and creatives” lists, online putting William Shakespeare- writer and Sean Holmes- director at the same level as Steve Thompson- trombone or Tess Dignan – Head of Voice drives me into paroxysms of rage, which is why we booked so little at The Globe this year.  The programme is just as bad … 23 names come before “Director” in the list, 22 before designer. Then there’s the bios mixing the actors and everyone else. That’s never how anyone reads it … you check if you’ve seen the actors before. Sorry, but no one wants to know if “Globe Associate – Text” was on previous plays you’ve seen. No, they’re not all equal. We often book on the director rather than the company or the actors, let alone the assistant wig maker.

I never miss a Dream though. A cast of eleven? Yes, I’ve seen The Watermill and other companies strip it down this much, but given the size of the audience and the size of the stage, perhaps The Globe should think about employing more actors rather than swapping genders of the few they use.

Sean Holmes directed the absurdly chaotic very small cast version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream (LINK TO REVIEW) for Filter / Lyric Theatre in 2011. He is the new Assosciate Artistic Director at The Globe and The Globe has been crying out for an experienced director’s input.

2019 is the year that The Bridge Theatre did one of the best ever productions of the play AND had an audience in the pit like The Globe.  The last time The Globe did it in 2016 was Emma Rice’s 5 star production, the best The Globe has ever done it, which means they have a mountain to climb. The solution is to go around it. After all, The Globe could, and probably should, do A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Twelfth Night, As You Like It and Much Ado About Nothing at least every other year.

Multiple Pucks

So what are the unique points? First, all the cast take it in turns to play Puck, wth a PUCK T-shirt marker. At crucial points several of them play Puck together and at the end, everyone does taking a line each. The other is that Starveling is a member of the audience, selected to come out and be pushed through the part. it’s not quite the RSC’s Play For A Nation concept of The Dream, but it worked and our “Gavin Starveling” was great- he towered over the other rude mechanicals. Sean Foley has taken on board the interactive possibilities of The Globe and has a great deal of entrances through the pit, and makes much use of a sloping walkway down into the audience. He has used the space.

The pre-show: The Hackney Colliery Band

 

We were delighted at the return of the pre-show. The gallery orchestra are an actual band … the Hackney Colliery Band (no there are no coal mines in Hackney, it’s a joke). They have CDs and 45s out. Being a band rather than musicians assembled for one show shifts things positively. They play before the show, and supervise a pinata hitting contest with small kids brought up from the audience. It can’t happen very often, but one kid ended up getting a pinata piece right into the tuba.

The majority of the cast are Afro-Caribbean, and most of the Rude Mechanicals including Bottom are female and AfroCaribbean. Even The Globe realized that Flute, protesting at playing a woman’s role as Thisbe, has to be male (Billy Seymour). He was also the only white member. While it adds a raised eyebrow to the Titania – Bottom love scene, we have seen female Bottoms (that capital letter is so important) on stage before and Jocelyn Jee Essien is a brilliant one.

Jocelyn Jee Essien as Bottom the Weaver

The bending over backwards gender obsession at The Globe had Nadine Higgin doubling as Quince and Egeus. You might do that with a small cast, though a full Globe can surely afford another actor. I was dubious about calling this Egeus “he” “him” and “father”. The switch to she, her, mother causes no scanning issues with the lines. I can’t see why a furious mother could not demand that penalty for disobedience. I have no issue with saying “OK, let’s make that character female” but mainly I’m annoyed with “let’s have a female play the male role and still call the character male.”

There were two obvious nods to the Bridge production, or let’s be frank, lifts from the Bridge production. At the Bridge Hippolyta was pulled on in a glass cage as Theseus’s prisoner. Here she was in a large cardboard box which had to be broken open to reveal her with FRAGILE tape across her mouth. OK, that’s sufficiently different, and I can’t be alone in wincing as the FRAGILE tape is pulled off her mouth.

The other one isn’t sufficiently different, it’s almost exactly the same. The Rude Mechanicals in rehearsal need a calendar to work out if there will be a moon on the night of the play. So they ask for a mobile phone from the audience. They make a thing about not being able to switch it on. They take a Selfie with it. The Bridge added them adding the cast discovering something rude on it.This had the cast pleased to get an iPhone second time. It will be improvised, but we had seen the Bridge one twice. Yes, it’s a great idea. There’s no copyright on it, and while a director might file the idea away for future use, the two productions have overlapped and run at the same time. I wouldn’t have done it this season!

Jocelyn Jee Essien as Bottom (dressed as a Carnival donkey) gets it on with Titania (Victoria Elliot)

Another oddity is that at times (four I think) characters switch to another language for a few lines … French from Bottom, then I think Welsh (maybe Irish Gaelic) and two what seemed like African languages. It brought a sense of world inclusiveness.

Ciaran O’Brien (Demetrius) takes his turn as Puck

It is all played very broad and loud, and the cast have licence to add lines, especially Bottom and Quince. At one point, discussing the lion, our Bottom suggests going Jamaican and having a vegan lion (Rastafarians are vegetarian). LOUD is a positive – in recent years some actors have failed to project at the necessary outdoor level in this huge space. Everyone here projected well. Then LOUD works well for the Rude Mechanicals, but early on it makes the four lovers too shouty. That’s resolved once they get into the forest and altercations begin … Shouty works there.

Peter Bourke as Theseus. Victoria Elliott as Hippolyta (this is the late scene where they are hunting in the forest and discover the sleeping lovers: hence the deer)

We start off with a very odd Theseus (Peter Bourke) dressed in pink military uniform as some kind of South American dictator. Hippolyta as Queen of the Amazons (Victoria Elliot) is bound and has a brass bra plate. Theseus is a happy old fool. Hippolyta hates his guts all the way … she ends up snogging Bottom in the final post-wedding scene. Later, as they become Oberon and Titania the costumes are spectacularly bright and elaborate. More than one review comments on the psychedelic colour palette. By then the blue haired Oberon is like some pantomime demon king.

Peter Bourke as Oberon, and Victoria Elliott as Titania

The Lovers are dressed in black and white as a contrast to the surrounding riot of vibrant colours. They have some good moments and Helena (Amanda Wilkin) projects much of her dismay directly to the audience from the walkway. In the first forest scene, Lysander (Ekow Quartey) is like a Barry White  / Isaac Hayes LERVE singer wooing her and trying to join her on her single blanket. When she rejects him he goes off and brings on a huge iflatable double mattress in hope. Well, that gets seen to …

Later: Helena on the big mattress

When both have magically started fancying Helena she does a tremendous snog with her preferred Demetrius … Lysander intervenes and they all end up rolling on the floor, with Demetrius and Lysander accidentally kissing each other. They kiss at The Bridge, but that’s playful Puck magic and shock. They kissed last time in Emma Rice’s version, but that was a gay undercurrent. Here it’s just accidental in the rolling about. Very funny.  Faith Omole is a suitably outraged Hermia. Ekow Quartey did a very funny self-dismayed shock at calling her an “Ethiop.” Ciaran O’Brien was an almost hyperactive Demetrius. Yes, it worked. Louder, broader, but it worked.

Ekow Quaryey as Lysander and Faith Omole as Hermia

The Pyramus / Thisbe play is the high point where we wonder if they can possibly find something that has not been done before. They win. Our audience member has to cycle a captive bike to generate light for the lamp in the moon. Quince has a disco set up with mic and turntables. All break into song.

Rachel Hannah Clark as Snug / Lion

The lion comes on initially with a long body and three other sets of legs. Wall is the serious mime in white. We’ve see a pipe between the legs as a chink before but it was well executed here. The death? First Thisbe loses the whole dress not just a scarf so is down to boxer shorts. Then Pyramus can’t get a blood canister to detonate under the costume … having done it, Thisbe comes on bare-chested and we wonder how they’re going to do her death. They do.

The Wedding Scene: Ciaran O’Brien as Demetrius, Amanda Wilkin as Helena, Faith Omole as Hermia, Ekow Quartey as Lysander

I’m going for four star … the Bridge is better, so was the Emma Rice, and the RSC Play For A Nation … those define 5 stars for me.  Suffice it to say though that this is easily the best production we have seen at The Globe since Emma Rice departed.

****

PROGRAMME

I don’t think the recent spate of enigmatic programme and pre-publicity covers is doing them any favours. The one at the top of this page is far better:

Programme / brochure image

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star

Theo Bosanquet, The Stage ****
The Times ****
The Arts Desk ****
Alex Woods, What’s On Stage ****
Rachel Haliburton, iNews ****

Peter Bourke’s disturbingly eccentric Oberon and Victoria Elliott’s Titania preside ably over the madness, with Elliott revealing herself as a vocal powerhouse in this forest. And indeed ultimately it’s in its glorious mash-up of musical styles that the production achieves full lift-off – revealing Globe associate artistic director Holmes’ interpretation as an ingenious vision that sings proudly and boisterously for our times

3 star
Fiona Mountford, Standard ***

What Michelle Terry’s reign as artistic director has so far lacked is directors for the individual productions with a strong and sure sense of the material and their vison (Amen!) . Holme’s vision is not in doubt and a receptive audience was excited bu the boisterousness of it all but I do worry about how much subtlety is sacrificed for this.

Rosemary Waugh, Time Out ***

The entire show is pitched somewhere between a first-week freshers’ party and the birthday celebration of a really spoilt five-year-old. There are piñatas, streamers, glitter face paint, pink hair, loads of deely boppers, audience interaction on the level of a Christmas show and giant balloon letters. Members of the Hackney Colliery Band proudly toot and drum throughout with an impressive energy similar to that of the band that follows the England football team to matches. 

Cindy Marcolina, Broadway World

An eye-catching production, however, some dubious elements don’t fit the context, and others take the playful atmosphere to inappropriate areas. The latter criticism is mainly due to awkward sexual innuendos that become too on the nose and crass when overplayed (Titania appears to enjoy playing the flute that descends between Bottom’s legs quite a lot) and that remove the comedy from the whimsical and lighthearted climate of the festive universe.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

OTHER PRODUCTIONS OF A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – RSC 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Headlong 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Filter 2011
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Selladoor 2013
• A Midsummer Nights Dream – Handspring 2013, Bristol
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Grandage 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Propellor 2013
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream RSC 2016, ‘A Play for the Nation’ at Stratford (February)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream RSC 2016 Revisited Stratford, (July)
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream – BBC TV SCREEN version 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bath, 2016
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Young Vic 2017
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill, Newbury 2018
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill on Tour, Poole 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sh!t-Faced Shakespeare, Wimborne 2019

SEAN HOLMES (Director)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Filter 2011

FAITH OMOLE
An Ideal Husband, Classic Spring 2018