A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. To 23 September.

Chichester

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
by William Shakespeare

Chichester Festival Theatre In rep to 23 September 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2pm Sun 4pm
Audio-described 13 August, 28 August 2pm, 18 September 18 2pm
Runs 2hr 40min One interval

TICKETS: 01243 781312
www.cft.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 July

Clarity for first-time Dreamers, but a lack of coherence between the play's various worlds.This is a much abused play, hijacked for any number of populist impositions one way, while critical interpretations plunge it the other way into post-Freudian nightmare. Little of those, at least, in Chichester's revival which is Wagnerian in having fine moments and dull quarters of an hour.

It's welcoming for new audiences. Word emphasis and gesture make meaning clear, sometimes at cost to the poetic line but especially helpful in the lovers' fast-paced scenes, where Akiya Henry's dynamo Hermia neatly contrasts Daisy Haggard's clear, put-upon Helena, while James Loye is a clear, confident, comical Lysander.

The Mechanicals do alright too, though only one's particularly characterised: Barry McCarthy's excellent, curmudgeonly Starveling. He enters in jacket and tie, the most senior of the troupe and clearly semi-detached from the whole enterprise. When he's offered Thisbe's Mum as a character, he takes his chair and plants it away from the others, back to them, suggesting he might be about to become entirely detached.

It's a good point the character never appears in Pyramus and Thisbe', so presumably he got his way. But only to end up saddled with Moonshine. His irritation is evident in the Mechanicals' performance, his pet dog suffering his expressions of stored-up fury. Seeing that stuffed creature swinging at a rope's end is the only gain from staging Pyramus and Thisbe' high on a gallery. Restricting the comic action, it makes the most down to earth characters remote, displaying them as comical while depriving them of a balancing humanity.

It's the Fairy world where much production energy's expended, with aerialists astride suspended hoops, which descend to stand for the entangling forest. But the stark look for all the starscape background, and despite a flying mini-light seeming to leap between characters as Oberon's drug and bright circus-coloured Fairy costumes neither create an individual world nor integrate these scenes with others.

A pity, for there's promising tension in Hippolyta's clear surprise at Theseus' initial judgment on Hermia, which is not clearly worked-out by their doubled Fairy selves. Alas, an unmagical Fairyland and distant Mechanicals don't add up to a very fanciable Dream.

Theseus/Oberon: Jeffery Kissoon
Hippolyta/Titania: Noma Dumezweni
Hermia: Akiya Henry
Helena: Daisy Haggard
Lysander: James Loye
Demetrius: Joe Anderson
Egeus: David Killick
Philostrate/Puck: John Marquez
Moth: Anna Lowe
Peaseblossom: Tom Silburn
Cobweb/Acrobat: Matt Costain
Mustardseed: Fiona Dunn
Fairy Acrobat: Vicki McManus
Peter Quince: Jonathan Cullen
Bottom: Graham Turner
Francis Flute: Daniel Abelson
Tom Snout: Kieran Hill
Snug: Ricky Fearon
Robin Starveling: Barry McCarthy

Director: Gale Edwards
Designer/Season Installation Designer: Alison Chitty
Lighting: Peter Mumford
Sound: Matt McKenzie
Composer: Jason Carr
Movement: Michael Ashcroft
Voice coaches: Kate Godfrey/Neil Swain
Assistant director: Nik Ashton

2004-07-18 11:54:07