A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. To 5 April.

Hornchurch

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
by William Shakespeare

Queen's Theatre To 5 April 2003
Tue-Sat 8pm Mat 20 March 5 April 2.30pm
Audio-described: 5 April 2.30pm
BSL Signed: 26 March
Runs: 2hr 30min One interval

TICKETS: 01708 443333
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 March

Blue-sky thinking with some earthy performances.It all fell into place with the fairies, as inverted greeny-blue brollies descended from the heights. With the impossibly blue, fleecy-clouded set - separate panels around a stage sprouting various-height, wardrobe-like columns - this is a dreamscape after Magritte. Rodney Ford gets as near as can be to how the Belgian Surrealist might have designed a Dream.

It's part of a concept that takes the Queen's first Shakespeare in 15 years into their familiar repertory of rock-musicals, comedy and naked adventure.

Director Bob Carlton who turned The Tempest into Return to the Forbidden Planet and made From A Jack to a King out of Macbeth - here sticks to the script, though he intercuts the lovers' woodland chase and the Mechanicals searching for their lost comrade Bottom, creating a whirl of mad confusion.

There are distinct sound worlds too. Fanfares greet the royals Theseus and Hippolyta; most actors double as musicians (a principle for being in the Queen's ensemble). Everyday reality and nocturnal imaginings are characterised by wind and strings. The Mechanicals march on as a town band, with some Monty Pythonesque Sousa suitably forthright, unsubtle four-square playing.

For the fairies Carlton's imported hi-jinks string quartet Bebeto, who fling their strings around the stage and are given a couple of brief concert spots around the interval - Mozart, with (what else?) Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. With typical Carltonesque cheek, Edward Bruggemeyer's need to shift between fairy and Mechanical scenes is solved by inflicting a grievously weak bladder on Starveling, ocasioning him several sudden, premature exits.

Bebeto's major contribution creates, with Chris Jaeger's lighting and Ford's fragmentedly Surreal set, a nocturnal wonderland of atmospheric sounds and harmonies. It's intensified by Fredrick Ruth's fairy-footed Oberon leaping distances across various heights, and Kraig Thornber's Puck sliding onstage with a whistle, or bursting though concealed column-doors.

The loss is in verse-speaking, which often varies between the functional and the clodhopping. The exception comes with the non-musical lovers, who handle their scenes with subtlety and grace: there's real hurt as well as anger between Helena and Hermia.

Not a definitive Dream then, but a very distinct one.

Theseus/Oberon: Fredrick Ruth
Hippolyta/Titania: Carol Sloman
Egeus/Snug: Richard Dax
Quince/Philostrate: Steve Edwin
Hermia: Celia White
Demetrius: Jonathan Markwood
Lysander: Philip Reed
Helena: Helen Anderson-Lee
Bottom: Matt Devitt
Flute: Richard Emerson
Starveling/Mustardseed: Edward Bruggemeyer
Snout: Richard Brightiff
Cobweb: Dmitri Van Zwanenberg
Moth: Ezme Gaze
Peaseblossom: Jo Drake
Puck: Kraig Thornber

Director: Bob Carlton
Designer: Rodney Ford
Lighting: Chris Jaeger
Sound: Whizz
Musical Director/Arranger: Carol Sloman

2003-03-20 12:00:38