Skip to main content

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
The snow is falling throughout most of director Matthew Lenton's 
refreshing new look at Shakespeare's darkest of rom-coms. While this 
takes literally the bard's own scripted notions of how the seasons are 
out of whack, it opens with a sorry-looking Bottom tending to a 
terminally ill wife, his only distraction a TV talent show that might 
just help him and his fellow wannabes live the dream. Given his wife's 
blessing to chase his muse following a mercy call from Peter Quince, 
Bottom does exactly that, led on his way by a gaggle of blonde-wigged 
fairies who resemble peroxided Harpo Marxes.

This is accentuated even more when the mechanicals are conjured into 
similar apparel by Cath Whitefield's  wide-eyed Puck, who  sprinkles 
her star-dust with abandon. The quartet of confused lovers, meanwhile, 
are too wrapped-up in themselves and their colour-coded space-age 
winter warmers to connect, and Flavia Gusmao's lusty Titania is 
seriously on the prowl.

Taking place on Kai Fischer's huge lop-sided set, Lenton's Dream 
injects even more fun into the play as it stands. When Hermia and 
Helena bitch at each other while their prospective partners go 
bare-chested for a fight that's more cuddle than punch-up, Whitefield's 
Puck watches while munching on popcorn as if at a movie.

For the Mechanicals' final star turn, Jordan Young's hilariously 
deluded Bottom goes all Hollywood Method, and when his troupe win the 
competition, their eruption of orchestrated pleasure could be something 
straight out of  an X-Factor finale. It's only when Bottom returns to 
his ailing wife, however, that things hit home. When the dream fades, 
the image suggests, reality bites harder than ever.


The Herald, October 25th 2012

ends

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more