Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Replacing the magic with mayhem
When performing Shakespeare to a modern audience, there are a few methods that an artistic director can go with. One may either strive to reproduce a production as close to what Shakespeare himself might have done as possible, or one will try to boldly tread new ground. Emma Rice’s 2016 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Globe Theatre is by far one of the most innovative staging’s to date. With bold costumes, abstract sets, and raucous musical numbers, Emma Rice has catapulted the mystical piece of stage play into an eighties fever dream.
The first thing that one will notice when watching the play is the styling of the costumes. Theseus walks out in a full suit while Hippolyta (seen here cast as an Eastern European mail-order bride) wears an art deco pencil dress with a cheetah print coat. Off to a great start. The modern clothes act as a visual shorthand for the characters themselves: Theseus acts like a mafia boss, Aegis dresses in golfing gear (what better way to denote a rich old man?), and Lysander dresses in a leather jacket with graphic, rocker tees. The only characters that are even remotely dressed in Shakespearean garb are the fairies, which makes sense; what else would ancient powers as old as the forest wear? Oberon (played by the same actor as Theseus, while Titania is played by the same actress as Hippolyta) wears the doublet and hose of Shakespearean times, while Puck wears a bastardization of one. In fact, all of the fairies look as if they have spent some time in the Rocky Horror Picture Show universe. They wear brightly colored, mismatching bands of fabric as skirts (save for Puck, who wears a Shakespearean ruff and top over a leotard over tights). These skirts part in the front to show off hot pants, fish net tights, and knee-high socks with bedazzle shoes. That is not the end of the bedazzling, as many of the fairies where spangly nipple tassels. When taken in with their Pennywise-esque hairdos (gigantic foreheads with hair popping out of the sides) they look incredibly garish, and truly like something from an eighties B-movie. Their over the top, hyperactive, hypersexual actions are also what reminded me of Rocky Horror Picture Show. As if occasionally breaking into rock-and-roll backed sonnets were not enough, Puck certainly seems to have the naughty tendencies of Dr. Frankenfurter, hip thrusting and suggestively eating bananas.
The set is very bare. The main items that are used are tables draped in white cloths, which stand in for just about anything the cast needs. They are the wedding tables, Titania’s bed, and useful perches in order to grant the character’s height and levels throughout the production. What was interesting was the inclusion of these tables in the audience as well. This let the cast enter and exit from more areas than just the back of the Globe’s stage. They were able to flee into the crowd and appear suddenly, as if by magic. Of course, when speaking of magical entrances, Titania and Puck’s descent from the rafters springs to mind. After the interval Puck gets lowered down on wires, flipping and spinning in the air. It is a joyous flight meant to illustrate the mischievousness of the character. Titania, meanwhile, is lowered gently down into her fairy entourage, who sing sweetly while lights shine off of the yards and yards of fabric in her dress. It is a beautiful moment, illustrating the wonderful use of light in this production.
With such a minimal set, one has to get creative in order to denote the changing of scenery. The ceiling of the Globe, for this production, was filled with paper lanterns. These lanterns were able to be lit by the various colored lights used in the show in order to help que the audience into the change of scenery. For the first scene that takes place in the forest, the lights change from the warm golds of Theseus’ palace of a deep emerald green, as spools of fabric unroll from the ceiling to accompany the fairies… who enter on firemen’s polls.
I am afraid that I now need to explain my criticisms with the piece, which comes down to tone. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a funny play, yes, but it is also whimsical and magical. Emma Rice’s production leans into the comedy, hard. The fairy characters do not feel regal or majestic, they feel like clowns. This could work if Puck were the only character who acted this way, but when all of them look and act like Cirque-de-Soleil merged with the Met Gala, things just become a tad silly. I have the feeling that Oberon was meant to be very intimidating, since he is the most soberly dressed. However, sober is one thing that he is not; he spends a majority of the time being heavily drunk, with eyeliner running down his tear-streaked face. His anger and plans to humiliate Titania feel less like the wrath of a magical king, and more like a sulky attempt to get even.
While I do like the modern spin that the play takes, there are moments where this is stretched to the point of absurdity. One instance that comes to mind is when Puck returns with the love flower and breaks into a rendition of “Mr. Bombastic”. The audience did laugh at this, yes, but I see it as a pointless joke that was thrown in to make Puck even more “wacky”. I compare this to the simple moment when Helenus tells Hermia “I have long legs to run away”, snaps, and sassily sashays out. That moment is also funny, and, in my opinion, makes sense. It is character and contextually motivated and is not needlessly anachronistic.
In brief, Emma Rice’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was full of wonderful ideas, that were, in some instances, taken too far. I am fine with changing the wardrobe of the human characters. I have no problems with the set (and I found the lighting to be spectacular). I did enjoy Puck’s, Oberon’s, and Titania’s costumes, even though the rest of the fairies where a bit over the top. What disappointed me was that it felt like, in an effort to make this play “funny”, the elegance and magic was sacrificed to absurdity. And while I do enjoy absurd plays, there is a time and place for them. Every time the fairies broke out into a rock ballad, or Puck squirted a water gun at the audience, I was immediately pulled out of the production. In plainer terms, the random wackiness of the fairies lost me.
