A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. To 4 September

Edinburgh/Musselburgh

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
by William Shakespeare

Theatre Alba mpr at Duddingston Kirk Manse Garden To 22 August 2004
Thu-Sun 8pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
then Brunton Theatre Musselburgh 2-4 September 2004
Thu-Sat 7.30pm
Audio-described 4 September

TICKETS: 0131 556 9579 (Duddingston)
0131 665 2240
www.bruntontheatre.co.uk (Musselburgh)
Review: Timothy Ramsden 15 August

A gentle Dream, good-humoured and clear.You'd think a wooded open-air setting would be just the thing for this play. But even in its frequent home at Regent's Park, the stage is a construct. At Duddingston the natural luxuriant foliage, set back from the main grass playing area, is inconveniently laid-out and sometimes over-assertive.

At other times, though, its side glades are put to fine use - Titania has a real, secluded bower, while the Mechanicals are dispatched to do their post 'Pyramus and Thisbe' bergamasque silently in another enclosure, half out of sight and mind as the court action moves centrally to the play's close.

Charles Nowosielski's production doesn't go for hefty interpretation. It's a gentle account, with none of the nightmares present in some productions - and only a mere moment (a musical outburst at Bottom's mention of 'The Tongs and the Bones') of the rock/pop iconography that can sometimes jazz up the action in productions.

This can make for placidity. Anne Lannan's Puck is one of the show's stronger performances, and it's justifiable for her to be more the kindly spirit of the prologue as given here than the mischief-maker Shakespeare first shows us. But several winsome smiles fewer could have made the point as clearly.

Clarity is a strong point - an open-air production can always attract audiences who wouldn't risk up to 3 hours trapped in the enclosed dark. And Alba has its own following, built through its Scottish repertoire (it took a near company mutiny to force Nowosielski's willing hand and do this comic spawn of sassenach).

So a production that's clearly spoken, tells the story with good humour and doesn't raise too many interpretative enigmas is apt. And clear speech, with straight characterisation is what the play gets here.

If there's an idea emerging throughout, it's the way emotions cloud our lives. Everyone here is goodwilled towards other people. Theseus is clearly embarrassed at having to spell out to young Hermia the implications of refusing to follow her father's commands. But there's still a strain evident in his relationship with his wife-to-be.

The fairy king and queen are emotionally unbridled compared with the socially-aware Athenian royals. Oberon wishes only to help the human lovers he sees flitting unhappily through the forest. Yet when ther issue is his own desire for the changeling child, anger soon rips. Both he and Titania come close at moments; a reconciliation seems possible from people who don't really want trouble and strife. Yet as soon as heels dig in on either side, there's raging conflict.

It shows how destructive desire is. That's seen too in Helena, made miserable as the object of two young men's sudden passion. As they fight for her, pull her to them and argue around her, it's self-satisfaction rather than care for her as an individual that's burning them up.

The two male lovers come into their own as the sky darkens and the action proceeds. As for the women, there's a nicely played Hermia from Emma Laidlaw, sophisticated in her headband and long dress. But the performance of the evening is Michelle Duncan's Helena.

Bespectacled and demure, her body language a concave retreating into herself, fearful and furrow-browed, she lacks all self-confidence. When she and Hermia enter kitted out with little fur jackets for the woods, somehow Hermia's seems sophisticated, Helena's a childlike adornment put on in response to fond parental instructions.

Her cry 'I am as ugly as a bear' takes up her earlier praise of Hermia ('O happy fair', unenviously said to someone she thinks of as out of her league - though it shows her as being capable of some of the most beautiful lines in the play). It gives her eventual happiness in the multiple final marriage a particular warmth.

Fun too with the Mechanicals (Bottom, of course, plus a beefy, tattoed Thisbe and a phlegmatically semi-expressive Wall, whose concentration hilariously wavers wih his eye movements and variable responses to providiong a chink for the lovers). And, as expected with Alba, a fine score providing different sound worlds for fairies, lovers and tradesmen.

Theseus: Marcus Macleod
Hippolyta: Audrey Jenkinson
Egeus: Frank Skelly
Hermia: Emma Laidlaw
Helena: Michelle Duncan
Lysander: Kevin MacIsaac
Demetrius: Gareth Morrison
Philistrate: Alan Ireby
Oberon: Keith Hutcheon
Titania: Suzanne Dance
Puck: Anne Lannan
First Fairy: Jacqui Doran
Peaseblossom: Anna E Nowosielska
Cobweb: Louise Hoban
Moth: Eleanor Cairns
Mustardseed: Jennifer Harvie
Peter Quince: Alan McQueen
Nick Bottom: James Sutherland
Francis Flute: James Tennant
Tom Snout: Patrick Griffin
Snug: Robert Williamson
Robin Starveling: Christie Williamson

Director: Charles Nowosielski
Music: John Sampson

2004-08-16 15:33:35