(Production Patron: Katie Page, CEO Harvey Norman)
West Australia – April 9; Victoria – April 25-May 11; Canberra – Jun 7-15; Northern Territory Jun 29
Reviewed by Frank McKone
March 9
Creatives
Director: Peter Evans; Associate Director: Julia Billington
Set and Costume Designer: Teresa Negroponte
Lighting Designer: Benjamin Cisterne
Composer and Sound Designer: Max Lyandvert
Movement, Intimacy and Fight Director: Nigel Poulton
Voice Director: Jack Starkey-Gill; Dramaturg: James Evans
Cast 2024
Puck: Ella Prince (they); Hermia/Snug: Ahunim Abebe; Helena/Starveling: Isobel Burton
Demetrius/Snout: Mike Howlett; Lysander/Mechanical: Laurence Young
Oberon/Theseus/Flute: Richard Pyros; Titania/Hippolyta/Quince: Imogen Sage
Bottom/Egeus: Tom Matthews (understudy for Matu Ngaropo)
An announcement apologised for Mat Ngaropo, unable to perform because of injury.
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Despite now well-known actor Steve Bisley giving me the funniest death of Pyramus I could hope for in my Wyong High School production of Pyramus and Thisbe from A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1967), in the longest possible inch-by-inch collapse before staying dead for the longest time through Thisby’s
Asleep, my love? / What dead, my dove?
speech, until she at last acts with
Come, trusty sword; Come, blade, my breast imbue,
I’m going to have to admit that Peter Evans, Julia Billington and especially Nigel Poulton have out-sworded my directing skills.
Despite Tom Matthews having to come in at short notice as the inimitable Bottom playing Pyramus, with Richard Pyros as Flute playing Thisbe, the difficulties of Matthews’ stabbing himself with a full length sword, Pyros’ extracting the sword, and then stabbing him/herself in an entirely different way, made the most extraordinary laugh-out-loud scene.
Bell Shakespeare in this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream have achieved William Shakespeare’s satiric intention – all set, literally, in Athens, and a Wood near it. And what a surprising all wooden backdrop and properties set it is, thanks to the imagination of Teresa Negroponte.
Laugh as we may, so we should, and indeed we did from the gathering of the characters in Scene I:
Theseus: Stir up the Athenian youth to merriments;
Awake the pert and nimble spirit of mirth…
through to Puck’s exhortation to
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.
But Theseus also introduces us to issues, as relevant to the youth of today as in Shakespeare’s day, as he speaks to his fiancee Hippolyta – Queen of the Amazons – saying:
Hippolyta, I woo’d thee with my sword,
And won thy love doing thee injuries;
But I will wed thee in another key,
With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling.
There’s that sword. How can that pomp and revelling be a triumph, if love is won by doing injuries? What are the realities of love and life when we look at the news today of family and international violence?
But at another level, Shakespeare in this fantasy play of fairies and play-acting, is saying to us, come off your high horses, take a look at yourselves through the medium of the arts. Realise that what we believe to be true is never an excuse for doing injuries to those who believe differently.
On ABC Radio National on the very morning while driving to Sydney to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream, I heard Anwar Ibrahim tell Geraldine Doogue and Hamish Macdonald how essential it is for people to stop automatically taking sides for and against in every politically complex situation:
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/global-roaming/malaysia-prime-minister-anwar-ibrahim/103482398
Sitting down with Geraldine and Hamish on the sidelines of the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim revealed his desire for Australia to adopt a more 'mature' approach on China, his frustration at Western 'hypocrisy' concerning Gaza, achieving 'spiritual enlightenment' through Shakespeare and why being Prime Minister is no 'bed of roses'.
This is exactly why seeing Bell Shakespeare’s production is important. Andy McLean writes in their program:
The overall effect gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “painfully funny”. Make no mistake, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is more a black comedy than a golden idyll…. It’s all hilarious of course. But there’s something about the games that the fairies play and the fun they have which points to the potential for danger. One suspects that Puck would do far worse (and certainly not bother to put things right) were they not bound by the will of Oberon. Yet it’s precisely because of this danger that we laugh so much.
And there’s the measure of the excellent quality of this production. The acting – which includes a huge amount of physical theatre as well as wonderfully precise clarity of expression in each actor’s speaking – is exactly in the style needed to take the play just the right amount beyond realism into a kind of Brechtian ‘alienation effect’ which is both funny and illuminating at the same time.
And that makes the extra little push into farce so funny as Pyramus manages to kill himself with such a long sword, and Thisbe follows suit – in almost a kind of spoof of Romeo and Juliet (which Shakespeare had recently written). The curtain call becomes an enormously enjoyable celebration of the actors’ success – in itself a great positive statement about the value of art, on William and Bell Shakespeare’s part.
A terrific show, not to be missed.
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| Bell Shakespeare 2021 cast as the Rude Mechanicals A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare |
©Frank McKone, Canberra
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