Posted by Sir Peter Hall on December 13, 19101 at 18:43:50:
First of all, a disclaimer - Bill Shakespeare is my all time hero. With a few minor exceptions, the boy can do nothing wrong in my eyes. And Sir Peter Hall - founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Director of the Royal National Theatre, etc. - a visiting demi-god. It doesn't get much better than this. And yet...and yet.
Perhaps I was expecting too much, but Pete, for Pete's sake, did you have to be so pedestrian in this production?
Please understand, in spite of what I am about to say, this production is worth seeing, it is just a disappointment. After Hall's repeated public statements about the joy and excitement of working with American actors I, for one, thought that a more, uh,... frontier spirit might have gone into his direction. This is a play of enchantment, the success of any production of A Midsummer Night's Dream must ultimately depends upon the audience being enchanted. It is hard to be enchanted by such a journeyman effort from Hall. We American cousins deserve better.
I remember Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Production's version of A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Mark Taper some years ago. It was kind of strange in some ways - ending with a Rockettes dance routine by the whole cast - but it was interesting and fun.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is a comedy about love and marriage in their different forms - comedy being the operative word. Generally, this production is...well... ponderous. The play is very contradictory, in comparison to most of the great tragedies produced in Shakespeare’s later period. It neither plumbs deep truths nor explores complicated tensions of human existence. "Ponderous" is a fatal virus for a comedy. Sir Pete knows his stuff, so why he allowed the pace to drag so baffles me. By picking up the pace, the play could have been 10 to 20 minutes shorter without cutting a line.
(Shakespeare, by the way, seems to take a rather dim view of the institution of marriage - not surprising considering his own marriage probably was a "crossbow [shotguns not having been invented] marriage." Even projecting past Act V for newlyweds, about the only marriages in his works which appear not to be dysfunctional are Mr. and Mrs. Petruchio [not necessarily politically incorrect] and Mr. and Mrs. MacBeth.)
A Midsummer Night's Dream is, along with The Tempest, is one of Shakespeare's most lyrical plays. Lyricism is something mysteriously missing from this performance. Peter Francis James' Oberon, King of the Fairies, lacks the fire and majesty to make, what Hall himself in the program notes calls: "one of the supreme pieces of lyric writing in English," soar. If this is the King of the Fairies, perhaps the fairies need to install an elected government.
Kelly McGillis' Titania, Queen of the Fairies, at least projects a more regal bearing, albeit a somewhat domesticated queen - think of a young Queen Victoria if she had let Albert run the show.
As we work our way down the social ladder, Theseus, Duke of Athens (David Dukes) and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (Cindy Katz) also come up a bit short for me. Rather than the warrior Duke of Athens, I felt I was watching the CEO of an Renaissance accounting firm with his Junior League wife. Is this the couple where the guy can say to his intended, in all honesty:
Hippolyta, I wooed thee with my sword
And won thy love doing thee injuries[?]
Not in this or any other lifetime - unless, perhaps, they were using Xena plastic swords.
The young lovers - Hermia (Jennifer Dundas Lowe), Lysander (Hamish Linklater), Helena (Kathryn Meisle) and Demetrius (Mark Deakins) - after a slow start at least get up to speed when they find themselves wandering about the forest. I would have preferred them a bit more spunky and I thought they missed some comic opportunities (but, hey, so did I when I played Lysander years ago, distinguishing myself by calling Hermia "Hernia" one night). In many ways, Lysander and Demetrius are two of the most indistinguishable roles this side of Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern and Linklater and Deakins do a good job differentiating them for us.
Then we come to Bottom - "sweet bully Bottom" - played by Brian Murray. Bottom, one of the great comic characters ever created, has the opportunity to walk away with the play. With this production, he should have run away with the play. He didn't. It wasn't that Murray was bad - none of the actors in this production are bad or even an embarrassment - it's just that he fell short of the comic potential of the role.
The most pleasant surprise was Richard Thomas' Puck. John-Boy we hardly knew ya! I suppose I shouldn't be surprised (I still remember the first time I ever saw him years ago on an early episode of Night Gallery called, as I recall, the Death Eater). His Puck is a delicious feral goat of a satyr, all a-quiver with excitement like an over-eager puppy ready to fetch a rubber ball, newspaper, or, indeed, "a little western flower" to please his master. For me, Thomas' Puck will be the memory I carry from this production.
Also, credit is due to Sir Peter for making good use of Los Angeles' only really resident Shakespearean acting company - The Hobart Shakespeareans, the remarkable grammar school students, under the guidance of their teacher, Rafe Esquith - who play the Indian Boy, Peasblossom, Cobweb, Moth, Mustardseed and other assorted fairies. Esquith (who has twice nationally been named Outstanding Teacher of the Year) and his students are one of the great educational success stories.
I look forward to seeing this company perform Measure for Measure, which I hear is a much more imaginative production. I hope so. It is one of my favorites and is produced too infrequently. In spite of my disappointment with this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, I hope Sir Peter and his fledgling rep company will come again and again. The welcome mat is still out, even if it needs to be used to dust off this demi-god's feet of clay.
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