A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. To 16 September.
Dundee
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM
by William Shakespeare
Dundee Repertory Theatre To 16 September
Tue-Sat 7.45pm Mat 2, 9 Sept 2.30pm, 6, 13 Sept 2pm
Audio-described 9 Sept 2.30pm (+touch tour)
BSL Signed 14 Sept
Runs 2hr 40min One interval
TICKETS: 01382 223530
www.dundeerep.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 30 August
A dark and stormy night.
As Britain’s northernmost year-round producing theatre, Dundee Rep might have wanted to make a climatic point in this production, with its wet, snowy midsummer night. Yet the mood’s more than meteorological. It starts with Irenen Macdougall’s Hippolytya being fitted-for her wedding-clothes almost as if for a prison-suit. The atmosphere’s tense, her husband-to-be Theseus sitting across the stage observing distantly in all respects, while Hippolyta’s face expresses near enmity. Under this, drum-laden music thunders with hostile force.
It sets the tone for what follows, which is thundery and sodden. Several characters get a severe dunking in the water running between and behind the bare wooden sections of Naomi Wilkinson’s set, which is fully in tune with the world created by director Dominic Hill. Nearer nightmare than dream its waking hostilities are worked out through the night’ transformations, mental and physical.
It’s only surprising more isn’t made of Hermia’s actual dream of a snake attacking her at the start of her nightmare voyage through desertion in the Athenian wood. Later the rumbustious lovers tear, pull and shout at their rivals and former friends with equally vicious desire and hatred. Helena especially suffers, being dropped in the water and left to climb effortfully out.
Morning might bring some light, but not warmth (Bruno Poet’s atmospheric lighting emphasising the point). Tensions within court, fairy-world and the world of Athenian amateur drama remain. The lovers’ muddle is paralleled by Titania’s horror at seeing the ass-Bottom she fancied in her drugged delusion, while the performance of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’ remains full of tensions, however comical they are (Hill goes for rough humour here). Robert Paterson’ and John Buick are strong as Bottom and Quince (Buick also makes Egeus a highly irate father), while Ann Louise Ross, through natural ability, makes a fine moment out of Moonshine’s one, much-interrupted line.
Vigorously performed, at the final preview the impact was forceful though the intensity of the vision brings a limited focus. Oberon and Puck’s final blessings can rarely have seemed more out of kilter with what’s gone before. Still, there’s energy and clarity within Hill’s nightmare night-time vision.
Hippolyta/Titania: Irene Macdougall
Theseus/Oberon: Okon Ubanga-Jones
Philostrate/Puck: Kevin Lennon
Egeus/Quince: John Buick
Hermia: Kim Gerard
Lysander: Cameron Mowat
Helena: Emily Winter
Demetrius: Keith Fleming
Bottom: Robert Paterson
Starveling/Peaseblossom: Ann Louise Ross
Snug/Moth: Matthew Bill Boyd
Snout/Mustardseed: Ian Grieve
Flute/Cobweb: Ewan Donald
Director: Dominic Hill
Designer: Naomi Wilkinson
Lighting: Bruno Poet
Composer: Dan Jones
Movement: Sally Owen
2006-09-06 08:03:07