A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - Theatre Review

WHAT: A Midsummer Night's Dream
WHEN: 16 - 20 July 2024
WHERE: Bluestone Church Artspace
WRITTEN BY: William Shakespeare
DIRECTED BY: Mitchell Wills
MUSICAL DIRECTION BY: Carly Wilding
DESIGN BY: Zachary Dixon
LIGHTING BY: Jacob Shears
PERFORMED BY: Paolo Bartonemei, Lore Burns, Todd Costello, Jackson Cross, Liliana Dalton, Asher Griffith-Jones, Lucy May Knight, Frances Lee, Tony Rive, Maddie Roberts, Bridget Sweeney, Riley Street, and Amy Watts
STAGE MANAGED BY: Giacinta Squires

Tony Rive and Frances Lee - photo supplied

Midsummer is 24 June in the UK so you could argue this production of Williams Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, presented by Sevenfold Theatre Company at Bluestone Church Artspace, is a little late in the year, but the play is 428 years old and everything geriatric does move a little slower. On the other hand, we are on the other side of the world and are in another endless Melbourne winter so the weather turbulence which is supposed to encompass this play is something we are all in the middle of. At least the characters in this play get a bit of sunshine in the morning. We still have months to wait for that.

Let's start with the elephant in the room. Anybody who tells you they are doing something new and different with any Shakespeare play is woefully ignorant. The Shakespeare plays have been performed as is and torn apart a gazillion times over the last 400+ years and are pretty much in constant production somewhere on the planet every day of our lives. I know they say there are only 7 stories but it is time humanity recognised there was more than one playwright in the world...just sayin'. 

I do know why people like doing Shakespeare over and over and over and over and over again. Firstly, it's free - you don't have to pay him for his work. Secondly you can do anything you want to his writing - it's not like he is alive to stop you. Thirdly it is large group ensemble work, and, in this day and age, no playwright can even get looked at if their plays have more that 5 characters which means you don't get that same football team camaraderie you can get with a Shakespeare.

Mitchell Will's (Director) version of A Midsummer Night's Dream does not break down any tropes or open any doors of newness or originality. It is, however, a nice and solid production with good blocking and he has evidently worked with the actors to make sure they know what they are saying and why they are saying it. He does a cute gender swap between Titania (Frances Lee) and Oberon (Tony Rive) which works to create a sweetness with the relationship with Bottom (Todd Costello). On the other hand, this swap does nothing to promote the actual messages in the play overall and actually contradicts his interpretation of fairies as dark creatures. I will talk about this a bit later.

The great danger of remounting something as old and well-known as any of the Shakespeares is the failure to undertake proper and meaningful dramaturgy. There is little to no reflection of the strangeness of the stormy weather on a midsummer night in this production - Shakespeare always uses weather to develop unrest and tension. There is no sense of understanding the tensions in England which underwrite the play including the outcomes of the Reformation and the crushing out of the bacchanalia-like midsummer celebrations which had evolved over time. There are no inferences which demonstrate the likelihood that Hippolyta and Titania might be references to Elizabeth 1and everything this implies. There is no recognition of the threat to theatre after the plague and then the persecution of Christopher Marlowe for the Dutch church libel and his homosexual indulgences which could very well underly Puck's (Liliana Dalton) obeisant apology at the end of the show.

Having said that, given modern times, Wills has done some other fun gender swaps - or maybe it is truer to say it is gender blind casting? Riley Street as Lysander is probably the great standout of the show. Not because she is playing a 'male' character. It is because she is evidently a phenomenal young actor. Lucy May Knight holds her own against such a strong performance with intriguing physical nuance in her repertoire. Bridget Sweeney as Helena is also another great performance. Asher Griffith-Jones and Todd Costello do some excellent clowning although I think Costello only really comes into his stride from the point at which Bottom becomes the donkey and his version of Pyramus is roll on the floor laugh worthy. All of the actors could take a leaf from his book in establishing greater character definition when playing multiple roles.

What Sevenfold's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream excels at is the glorious set and costumes created by designer Zachary Dixon and a live sound design created under the musical direction of Carly Wilding. The publicity for this show said it was immersive. It is not immersive - it is thrust stage. It is, however, live surround sound. The music and the forest noises (created by the actors live every night) happen around the edges and behind the curtains which allow us to feel that this world is greater than the confines of the stage rostra and where Jacob Shears' beautiful shifting and shaping lights are pointing too.

This production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is fun and light. It hits all the marks. In the program Wills talks about fairies traditionally being 'gentle, dainty, beings' and how he has brought out a darker side. Again, there is a dramaturgy problem here. No creature of the nether realms of English culture are all sweet and light. Fairies have always been fickle tricksters - until Hollywood got hold of them anyway. Besides which, Shakespeare has written his fairies as quite troublesome so Wills could not have made them anything other than that even if he had tried. I do think their dialogue is some of what was cut though so they are fairly tame in this production. 

Wills also talks about this being Shakespeare's first play with supernatural creatures which is true. The play very heavily leans on his poem Venus and Adonis (his first published work, produced a year earlier). It is also worth noting that the comedy sequence between Lysander, Demetrius (Jackson Cross), and Helena is potentially a tribute to Christopher Marlowe and leans heavily on the themes of Marlowe's poem Hero and Leander. Remember, all playwrights were poets back in those days. It doesn't take a genius to see that the play in the play - the great, shining glory of this particular production and possibly the most original thing I have seen in a Shakespeare in years - is a parody of Romeo and Juliet - or more specifically a subplot of the Venus and Adonis story.

In the end, what I am saying is that if you have to go and see another Shakespeare play this is pretty good dramatically, and truly excellent on the production front. Dixon, Shears and Wilding work together to create a world of beauty, magic, and darkness. The actors are a reliable ensemble with some truly standout performances and even though we all know what is going to happen next this production makes it worth hanging around to see what that looks like when we get there. As I mentioned earlier, the big payoff is the play within the play at the end. If the whole show had been done like this THAT would have been a truly original and exciting version of the Dream indeed!

3.5 Stars