A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S UPDATE.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Oxford Playhouse, to 14 June 2003 (01865 305305) Seen by Timothy Ramsden Thursday 12 June
As the shortest night approaches Edward Hall's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream from Newbury's Watermill Theatre (reviewed there by Mark Courtice) comes to the end of its tour up the road at Oxford Playhouse.It now presents a few questions. The all-male cast, for example. This served well enough for Hall's Julius Caesar, Henry V and Rose Rage, his 2-part adaptation of the Wars of the Roses sections of Shakespeare's Henry VI trilogy. Those are about the male world of politics and action, with few female voices.
But the Dream's far more equally voiced: every man (and fairy) Jack has his Jill, usually with daggers-drawn. Vigorous acting either didn't worry, or at points of physical contact intrigued, the school-parties at a midweek matinee and the broadly-drawn 'Pyramus and Thisbe' performance caused whoops of excitable delight.
But in an over-crowded profession where far more good female actors are out of work than male, the mix of rough, gaudy and androgynous female characters couldn't compete with the explorations of the play's women made by female performers.
Nor does the one-sex casting really take us back to Elizabethan days: there it was boys different in voice, different in build and in sensibility (not to mention hairline) from the present company, and reflecting a different social view of relationships between men and women.
Down at Newbury, intimacy is key, with the small stage lapping up to the audience often enough in recent years with a row or two stretched along and behind the traditional stage area. At Oxford, there's a raised proscenium. Lighting most of the time a silvan silvery moonlit texture - is held tightly in: there's little, if any, use of lanterns spilling light from the auditorium. This increases a sense of remoteness in the larger Oxford Playhouse. And size, mattering as always with things theatrical, calls for a broader, louder playing-style or swallows detail that would have registered at the Watermill.
But if I thought the company were giving me something which was different from those early weeks or where the impact of various performance elements had shifted in significance there could have been a more personal element. Seeing it, not just at the end of a long run, but as it happened the night after Peter Brook's La Tragedie d'Hamlet further up the road, at Warwick Arts Centre, also gave a perspective for the impact this Dream made on me.
Brook works by stripping away unnecessary externals. Hall (Edward) here flings in many devices and encourages a more overt acting style. So, am I viewing Shakespearean comedy in the light of a contrastingly-directed Shakespeare tragedy?
Who'd have thought watching a play could have been so complex?
Also visiting:
Globe Theatre, Neuss Germany 20-22 June
Teatro Romano Verona 9-12 July
2003-06-13 00:57:13