The Dream
He loves me, he loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.
Isn’t love infuriating? Just when you’re standing on firm ground,
the object of your desire will snatch the rug out from under you.
Just when you think you know where you are, they will pull the
wool over your eyes. To quote that other (21st century) Bard,
Beyoncé Knowles, ‘Your love’s got me lookin’ so crazy right now’.
Bell Shakespeare’s Peter Evans has perfectly
encapsulated this madness in The Dream. His fast-moving
version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream distils the play into
an intoxicating 90-minute rush of blood to the head. As the
young lovers see-saw between devotion and dejection, it will be
impossible to take your eyes off the action. As Puck works his
magic and Bottom blunders about, the laughs will come thick
and fast.
Evans’ approach is entirely in keeping with William
Shakespeare’s original intent. In Elizabethan England,
midsummer was a time to celebrate enchantment and
madness. And make no mistake, the Bard wants to show us
how insane love can be. He demonstrates again and again, in
numerous ways, that ‘reason and love keep little company’.
Early in the play, before the supernatural mischief even begins,
Hermia and Lysander are reckless in their pursuit of love; willing
to risk everything for it (family, home, even Hermia’s life). And
Helena’s dogged pursuit of Demetrius is against all common
sense, as she admits herself:
Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is wing’d Cupid painted blind;
Nor hath Love’s mind of any judgement taste:
Wings, and no eyes, figure unheedy haste.
And therefore Love is said to be a child,
Because in choice he is so oft beguil’d.
Later, when the fairies begin their hijinks, it’s actually
just an extension of the absurd human behaviour that’s already
in motion. Puck’s magic causes the characters to awaken from
sleep and become immediately besotted with one another.
(In the most extreme example of this, the fairy queen Titania
even falls for Bottom, a man with the head of a donkey.) But
Shakespeare isn’t really talking about magic here. He’s just
poking fun at the very human belief in ‘love at first sight’.
The language in A Midsummer Night’s Dream also
underlines the nutty nature of love. The word ‘dote’ pops up
more times here than in any other Shakespeare play. This word
evolved from the early German word ‘dotten’ which roughly
meant to behave in an unhinged manner. Dotten is also the
origin of the word ‘dotty’.
The lunacy of love continues right to the end of the play.
In the final comic crescendo, Bottom and his chums (aka The
Mechanicals) present the tall tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, two
infatuated lovers who end up killing themselves due to a mix
up. Even kissing – a universal act of love – is ridiculed, when the
lovers attempt to lock lips through a hole in a wall.
This ’play within a play’ brims with impassioned
speeches and implausible melodrama, and the audience laps
it up. But Shakespeare has the last laugh, because really the
plight of Pyramus and Thisbe isn’t that far-fetched, set against
the ‘real’ human behaviour we’ve just witnessed on stage from
the Athenian lovers. The Mechanicals are simply holding up a
mirror to true love.
In order to emphasise all this lovestruck madness in
The Dream, Peter Evans has taken a deft touch. He’s kept the
cast down to just eight actors; allowing audiences to witness
a madcap demonstration of inventive stagecraft. Actors will
double up (and even treble up) to play multiple characters
across the three interweaving plotlines. It’s a device that has
been used to a more limited extent in other productions of
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but rarely to this extreme.
That approach to casting highlights the tonal shifts
within The Dream. Shakespeare creates three different worlds,
and three different styles, within the one play. Seeing the same
eight actors flit between each of those worlds, in various roles,
illustrates just how skilfully Shakespeare wove his multiple
plots together. And it also intensifies the audience’s experience.
There will be a quick and palpable switch from uproarious
laughter, to stunned silence, to sheer wonderment.
And in this ambitious production, Evans has also gently
switched the sequencing of a small number of scenes, to
emphasise the ‘play within a play’ device. This helps to amplify
the celebration of theatre and imagination which Shakespeare
always intended the play to be. It also underlines one of the
great ironies of the original play, when The Mechanicals decide
to explicitly tell the audience that Snug the joiner is not really a
lion (he’s just acting the part of a lion, you see). The Mechanicals
don’t understand that theatre is an act of imagination and that
the audience already understands what they’re seeing.
Bell Shakespeare gives the audience a lot more credit
than The Mechanicals do. The set of this production will have a
rough n’ ready aesthetic, with nary a grain of fairy dust in sight.
Evans’ production puts its trust in Shakespeare’s sonorous
language and mesmerising characters, confident in the
knowledge that these alone can capture our imagination and
transport us somewhere magical.
Magical and utterly, round-the-twist bonkers. This is a
production to fall crazy in love with.
Andy McLean