A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. In rep to 26 September.

London

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
by William Shakespeare

Shakespeare's Globe In rep to September 2002
2pm September 6,10,12,14,18,20,24,26
6.30pm September 8,22
7.30pm September 5,11,13,17,25,27
Storytelling Performances 11am September 20,24
Runs 2hr 55min One interval

TICKETS 020 7401 9919
Review Timothy Ramsden 1 September

A quick, detailed, refreshing and rich production.How fluid the Dream is. In Britain alone the last year has included fine accounts like Giles Havergal's minimalist theatrical magic in Glasgow and Lucy Bailey's gutsy Manchester modernism. Now Mike Alfreds brings clarity and detail in a production that never loses its swift, comic sense of the play's overall structures.

To begin at the ending: a Pyramus and Thisbe which bypasses the frequent over overacting of many productions to focus on the relations between director Peter Quince and his company, and which has the whole cast finally fed up with a colleague's blind spot, emerging for a choric correct pronunciation of 'Nina's tomb'. A production-within-a-production no less funny for its hempen, homespun props and the director's constant nerves. As it plays the aristocratic stage audience lie on the ground, disposed in loving pairs at the front and sides of the Globe's great stage.

Their occasional acid comments, given their horizontal positions, suggest an ease, a restored comfort after their disturbing adventures less fateful but ironically rendering them just as 'amateurish' and comic in living as the Mechanicals are currently showing themselves to be in performance. As Bottom and co. struggle to act and show their characters' struggles, so we've just seen their currently complacent audience struggle with life in their own guise or in the cases of Theseus and Hippolyta in personas that unleash their power in a conflict where daylight selves no longer hold guard over their actions.

It's not that this is necessarily the precise Alfreds concept. But his clear direction and the many lively, strongly characterised company performances, allow the play's implications to emerge for each spectator.

At times details rush thrillingly to attention. There is comic detail in relationships: Puck the servant full of promises, less quick to fulfil them, wanders off to put a girdle about the earth, until Oberon speeds him with a kick. (Simon Trinder's goblin has fine tricks of movement, though vocally his tone and phrasing recalls a younger Eric Morecambe trying out a play what Shakespeare wrote).

Playing Titania seems a doddle by the side of Hippolyta, who has to suggest a lot in few words and those not directly related to the gender balance she's taken to establish in most modern productions. Geraldine Alexander's thoughtful fiancee asserts herself in leaving the opposite side from Theseus.

And John Ramm's training in bad acting (aka The National Theatre of Brent) fits him ideally for a Bottom blithely unconscious of his effect on others someone whom to know is to have to come to terms with.

Theseus/Oberon: Paul Higgins
Hippolyta/Titania: Geraldine Alexander
Philostrate/Puck: Simon Trinder
Egeus: Gary Lilburn
Hermia: Philippa Stanton
Demetrius: Keith Dunphy
Lysander: Richard Katz
Helena: Louis Bush
Peter Quince: Paul Trussell
Nick Bottom: John Ramm
Francis Flute: Aled Pugh
Robin Starveling: Ryan Early
Tom Snohut: Patrick Lennox
Snug: Jem Wall

Master of Play: Mike Alfreds
Master of the Words: Giles Block
Master of Movement: Glynn MacDonald
Master of Voice: Stewart Pearce
Master of Clothing & Properties: Jenny Tiramani
Master of Music/Composer: Claire van Kampen

2002-09-05 11:21:24