A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare
Barons Court Theatre, December 2000

Full of fairies, magic, moonlight and lovers, Shakespeare’s Dream is oft presented as an enchanting and enchanted frolicsome fantasia. More careful readings of the play, however, reveal darker shades, and it was these murkier hues that dominated the palette in Duncan Moore’s gothic production. Here, wisely, the emphasis was not on midsummer (which would have been a difficult trick to pull off halfway through a very wet and miserable December), but on night: much easier to conjure, given the dank, damp ambience of the venue. As for the “dream” element, this was very much of the hallucinogenic variety. Oberon’s “trip away” was never so guaranteed to enrage Anne Widdecombe.

Very like this summer’s Edinburgh Festival hit, The Donkey Show, this was both an adaptation of Shakespeare’s original, and a very exuberant, club-like one at that. By “club-like” I refer both to the setting and the occasionally heavy-handed treatment. There seemed to have been considerable cutting of the text, with which the cast literally played fast and loose, and a few, on the whole justifiable, liberties were taken with our beloved Bard. However this was, as they say, all in a good cause: that of having a good time. And on the night that I went, that was certainly what was had by actors and audience alike. It was not long before the darker hues were scratched away to uncover the brighter landscape beneath, although Duncan and his energetic ensemble decided against peeling away the further layer that would have revealed the true heart of the darkness.

This being the Barons’ Court, sense of the action taking place within a cellar nightclub was not difficult to suggest, but was admirably amplified by the minimalist set, psychedelic red and green lighting, and Louise Bellieu’s eclectic choice of costumes. It almost looked, in true ‘let’s put on the show right here’ fashion, as if most of the cast had just thrown on whatever they happened to find in the fancy dress box. Andy Watson’s set was simple but effective, starting with a rough and ready curtain reminiscent of a mummers’ play or the old fit-up companies, which was then pulled down to reveal a Grimm fairytale-meets-Aubrey Beardsley vision of twisted, intertwining trees. This was as far as the production or setting went to invoke the great external expanse of the Athenian wood: an artistic decision that had its indisputable pros but also its corresponding cons. The former included an ingenious interpretation of the inhabitants of fairyland and a completely credible context for the actions’ drug-induced goings-on.

The downside was that the quartet of lovers’ subplot lacked all sense of a physical endurance test: they simply seemed to be chasing each other across different dance floors and passing out in various alcoves. They were as pristine at the end of the night as they had been when they no doubt checked their coats into the cloakroom at the start, albeit maybe just a little damp around the armpits. Similarly, the rude mechanicals, with whom they shared the cream of the comedy, deserved all they got for choosing to rehearse in Madame JoJo’s in the first place. This was a fun show more summary than summery, and with far more sense of the subterranean than the supernatural.

Before the lights first rose, the audience was immediately wrong-footed by the sweet sound of an antique music box. This mocking reference to innocence and childhood was knowingly replicated later in the lullaby sung, to send Titania to sleep, by Robert Bailey’s fairy and a discordant offstage male chorus. It also put in other parodical appearances whenever Puck sardonically stressed the sing-song rhythm of her rhyming couplets, and later contrasted with the post-coital Bottom’s animalistic overture to the second act.

The thin line between the inhuman and the inhumane was deftly delineated by the fairy foursome of Oberon, Titania, Puck and Robert Bailey’s glorious Goth of a ‘First Fairy’, who compensated completely for the lack of Peaseblossom, Cobweb & co. In fact, the audience was left in absolutely no doubt as to why all the other elfin candidates had come second or third. Robert encapsulated what was best about this production: an intoxicating mix of the amusing (his “hi, mortal” was both inspired and naughty) and the eerie. That said, I personally found his Philostrate far more unnerving than his Fairy!

Mike Millar and Clarisse East also courageously accepted the challenge of doubling: as, first, Theseus and Hippolyta and then as Oberon and Titania, the respective rulers of the mortals and the fairies. The first coupling provided little room for movement, rather like the stage area in which they bravely attempted to sword fight à la Gomez and Morticia Addams. Mike’s Theseus dressed like Adam Ant and sounded, on occasion, like Prince Charles, before he swapped jacket and donned fright-wig to become the monarch formerly known as… In this production, Oberon was leagues away from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland but pure Alice Cooper. Here, was a twisted take on the “king of shadows”: a leather-clad lounge lizard, with pop video gestures and a vindictive streak. When he sneered, “wake when some vile thing is near”, the emphasis was definitely on the ‘v’ word. One shuddered to think exactly why he was so keen to have Titania’s arab boy…

As his feather- and flower-bedecked fairy queen, Clarisse seemed somehow in the wrong play and the wrong era. Compared to such modern grotesques, her charmingly graceful, gentle Titania smacked strongly of the Victorian music hall: a mildly mischievous Florrie Forde preaching to the perverted. This quaint air of chastity also resulted in her missing the comic open goal of Titania waking to find she has been enamoured of an ass. Indeed, as well as laughing at the ludicrous coupling of Titania and Bottom, one would wonder how on earth she ever got it together with Oberon were it not for the fortunate fact that the latter pair are not made of earthly matter. For my money, put Oberon with the snake-skinned Puck and then you’re cooking with ghoulish, groin-grounding gas.

Here was a Puck that I simply couldn’t imagine putting a girdle round about the earth in forty minutes, but could very easily picture doing likewise with a body harness and a Tory MP. Spunky and spiky rather than spritely or speedy, Katrina Mallon implied that Robin Goodfellow was not her name but rather a description of her day job. Wide-eyed, with cheekbones as sharp as the studs on her collar and an indeterminate voice that crossed both class and geographic borders, I was uncannily reminded of a young, pre-damed Maggie Smith.

That sublime comedienne would have appreciated, I am sure, the efforts and antics of the lovers and mechanicals. Though, like me, she might have wondered how the latter group lost their ‘al’ in the programme notes, thus promising unfulfilled fantasies of a chorus line of leaping KwikFit fitters or, given Mr Millar’s Christian name, a burst from The Living Years. Similarly, Dame Maggie might have felt that colour-coding the quartet (Lysander and Hermia in orange, Demetrius and Helena in green) kind of gave the whole game away, whilst emblazoning the men’s names on their T-shirts, as if they were kids’ TV presenters, implied that the audience were… er, well, kids, and so incapable of following a plot that even George Dubya voters would surely grasp.

Helena and Hermia, in 50’s outfits reminiscent of West Side Story, made a formidable double act: Lucy Clark’s wonderfully wet and pathetic Helena achieving the necessary height advantage thanks to her own whiplash stilettos and her rival’s ballet pumps. She pounced upon every comic moment and masochistic nuance with appetite: crawling and woofing as Demetrius’s lapdog, visibly shaking at Lysander’s protestations of love, staring fixedly, eyebrows frozen Victor Meldrew-like in disbelief, as both fought over her. Chloë Gilgallon as Hermia had the more difficult, less obviously comic role, but achieved a believable balance between sweet, childlike earnestness and amusing, furious feistiness, her handbagging of her unfortunate suitor being an especial treat. The ladies were well-matched by Stephen Palmer’s horny, hot-tempered Lysander, giving a great display of groin-led acting, and Alistair McClure as the cruellest but most credible Demetrius I’ve seen. His very proper and precise middle manager on a TA training course was also extremely funny both physically, adopting a boxing stance whenever challenged, and verbally, as in his terribly officious delivery of “you are too officious”.

I’ve always felt it a pity that this quartet whom one has grown to know and like suddenly metamorphose in Act Five into patronising boors and condescending snobs. In Duncan’s production, it was obvious that the lovers, and indeed the royal couple, couldn’t believe what they were seeing any more than I did. The Pyramus and Thisbe play-within-the-play is arguably Shakespeare’s most famous comedic tour de force, thus presenting any Bottom and fellow mechanic(al)s with a double-edged sword: it is virtually impossible not to get laughs, but almost as difficult to find new ways of getting them. I am delighted to report that this inspired, energetic Crazy Gang induced many “merry tears” and much “loud laughter”. Their “tedious brief scene” was probably not the briefest I’ve seen, but it was far from tedious. They seemed to be having great fun, and it was infectious. From corny visual gags (confusing a colander for a calendar) and physical clowning (the terrific tribute to silent movie chases) to liberal lashings of amusing ad libs, every comic truffle was snouted out and seized upon with relish.

The sublimely silly sextet worked wonderfully as a team, whilst retaining each character’s individuality. John Johnston’s Nick Bottom had provided good value throughout, particularly when launching into an impromptu cockney knees-up or tennis-match-watching as Titania dispensed orders to her fairy. However, he truly came into his own in the last act. A larger-than-life Dickensian burlesque in Elizabethan smock and modern denims and Doc Martens, his performance was equally engaging and wide-ranging. He received splendid support from Richard Thornton’s blue-jeaned boilerman of a Flute, his gravel-voiced horror at playing a woman transformed into a high-pitched Thisbe of whom Terry Jones would have been proud, and from Trevor Ellis’s slow-of-learning simpleton Snug. With Bisto-kid hair and expressive eyes, he made a marvellously festive lion, whose over-enthusiasm was matched by Andrew Rasheed’s eager Snout.

Earlier, in a neat twist, Snout had played runner to Alexander Gordon-Wood’s megalomaniac, megaphoned film director of a Quince. A bigger actor than all the rest put together, he revealed, and revelled in, more costume changes than a panto dame: from funereal black at Bottom’s alleged demise to his 18th Century Prologue complete with tricorne, ruffs and cuffs. Last, but certainly not least, was Piers Burnell’s exquisitely fey Starveling, his gimlet-eyed Mr Humphreys a stark contrast to his stern Sir Humphrey-like Egeus. Not content with this double tribute to British sitcom, Piers also treated the audience to a hilarious Stallone-intoned man in the moon!

No sooner had Theseus declined the option of an epilogue to this daft delight than the darker Dream asserted itself. The Duke did not seem best pleased at the thought of a happy ending, and so would have approved of Puck’s rather ominous and abrupt adieu. Like the host of a late night Channel 5 chat show whose earpiece has told her to wrap it up before the credits roll, Robin cursorily leered, jeered, then just as promptly disappeared. It was a fitting finale that encapsulated Shakespeare’s epithet that his Dream should be a “fierce vexation”.

Daniel Wain