Peter Viney's Blog

Royal Shakespeare Company
Interactive online 16 March 2021

About 25 minutes or less (they don’t tell you that before you pay)

We had looked forward to this so much. We also just renewed our RSC membership, which I almost regret, though it remains my favourite theatre. We like the RSC so much that we have often contemplated moving to Stratford. Do they believe this really was a viable performance to “sell” (for £10 for 25 minutes)?

You can see it free also. Do. You have to book, but it doesn’t take long to watch. I may be excessively harsh, but do tell me.

Particularly galling was the pre-advice to prepare a drink / refreshments for while watching. It led us to think we were devoting our evening to it. It started at 7.10. It was all done by 7.40. Incidentally, why start so early?

I suggest that Nicholas Hynter and The Bridge Theatre team are consistently doing better than the current RSC then. We were both actively angry watching this. Trouble is, the people who make this sort of nonsense will take any criticism as evidence of a strong reaction, which they will interpret as positive.

I can’t even describe how dire, misguided and amateur this was. Not one person involved could deliver a Shakespearean line. This has absolutely nothing to do with A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Technically, this “masterpiece” is just a load of yellow streaks flitting over the screen around a wooden designer’s mannequin figure, alleged to be Puck. If you want animation, go to Studio Ghibli or Disney / Pixel – someone who actually knows how to do this stuff. They were doing this with Andy Serkis as Gollum in The Lord of The Rings more than a decade ago. This was like kids released with a 1980s BBC-B computer. The rationale now is that they’re doing it live. but that’s as they did in the RSC The Tempest a few years ago. Interaction? We clicked a bit. We saw no result.

Have these people ever seen a firefly?

TEXT: You have one seed left to plant.

We hovered. We clicked. No appreciable effect.

The sound was poor. We have Bowes & Wilkins Hi-fi computer speakers from an iMac. I thought it was so bad I had to check with music afterwards from YouTube. It was NOT our speakers.

As the voices were so dreadful, we switched in closed caption. So, sound effects are in legible CAPS: “SILENCE” or “ROARING DRUMS”. Text was in tiny illegible lower case:

PUCK: Cobweb…

They intoned lines as if deep tragedy. Guys, this was once a COMEDY.

But, WTF, it’s irrelevant as all text appeared in captions ten to fifteen seconds after the line was uttered. So just annoying.

It was also jerky and froze briefly three times, though we watch HD films on Netflix or Amazon every night and that never happens. Technology? Piss poor.

In the supposed self-congratulatory question and answer afterwards (even worse than the main event), one poor actor said:

We have people come to see Shakespeare who would never have done before.

Sweetheart, THIS IS NOT SHAKESPEARE. NOTHING TO DO WITH SHAKESPEARE. JUST RANDOM LINES. THIS IS NOT THE DREAM.

The lines were meaningless. Nick Cave, a singer I love, was dire as the voice of the forest. Employ REAL actors. Not singers who think they are.

The visuals were dull. The music was banal.

What an awful waste of time and money this was. The cutting edge technology was uninteresting. Not one person involved delivered a line memorably. There was no discernible thread. I can see a genuine purpose in experimenting to see if it can be done. Fine. But then you need coherence. Computers were doing branching stories with multiple plot lines in the 1980s. I couldn’t discern that our interaction changed the story or led to alternative branches.

Shakespeare had plot and character. This had neither.

To me, the worst thing the RSC has ever been involved in.

ZERO stars.

It did inspire me to script Hamlet for them to do next time. Basically there will be Elsinore castle in deep murky fog and we will waft around the battlements dodging shooting stars. This is the full text:

Barnardo: Unfold yourself.
Osric: Aye, my good lord.
Player King: You mark his favourite flies.
Marcellus: Longer and longer.
Horatio: It followed hard upon.
Player Queen: Never come mischance between us twain.
Valtemand: Will we show our duty?
All: We do.
Valtemand: Give him threescore crowns.
Clown 1: For such a guest is meet.

Yes, I’m pretty pleased with that. It captures the essence of the play for me. It’s pinned he major characters. Free to use too.

OTHER REVIEWS OF The REAL A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM ON THIS BLOG:

• 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 2018
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Bridge Theatre 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2019
• A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Watermill on Tour, Poole 2019