A Midsummer Night’s Dream – REVIEW
Image: Imogen Sage, Richard Pyros and Matu Ngaropo in Bell Shakespeare's A Midsummer Nights Dream, 2024. Photo by Brett Boardman
With Shakespeare’s A Midsummer’s Night’s Dream being one of his most performed plays, audiences could be forgiven for thinking that they had seen it all before.
Bell Shakespeare’s 2024 production at the Sydney Opera House puts paid to that thinking as director, Peter Evans, the cast, creatives and crew have given a new interpretation to this much loved work.
Evans has truncated the text, changed the opening to give importance to the woods location, and cut the cast to just eight actors.
This version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream opens with the Mechanicals (the skilled labourers) rehearsing their play, Pyrmaus and Thisbe to present to the royal family of Athens on the upcoming wedding night of Theseus (Richard Pyros) and Hippolyta (Imogen Sage).
Here, Snug (Ahunim Abebe), Quince (Imogen Sage), Bottom (Matu Ngaropo), Snout (Mike Howlett), Flute (Richard Pyros) and Starveling (Isabel Burton) and Lysander (Laurence Young) are going through the creative process of staging a production, unaware that in the royal palace things are not going well.
Egeus (Ngaropo) wants his daughter Hermia (Abebe) to marry Demetrius (Mike Howlett) and is so determined that this should happen he is prepared to execute her or send her to a convent if she fails to do so.
The only problem is that Hermia is in love with Lysander (Laurence Young), so they decide to escape to the woods, away from the jurisdiction of the court.
Another character Helena (Burton) is in love with Demetrius which is affecting her friendship with Hermia.
The woods are a place of reality and unreality as the space soon comes under the control of Oberon (Pyros), the King of the Fairies, who’s married to Titania (Sage) and the deliciously miscreant sprite Puck (Ella Prince) who sets up many of the pranks on the humans that follow.
What we are witnessing is a cast that is equally matched, all fully inhabiting their many characters.
They are also one of the most physical ensembles working outside of circus. Evans, together with movement and fight director, Nigel Poulton, pushes the performers to their limits, especially in the second half, with fast paced choreography that is equal to the best classical slapstick, requiring expert timing and precision.
Prince makes a great Puck, bringing a lightness to the mischief their character creates.
Ngaropo shows great dexterity across all of his roles but it is as Bottom that he shines, playing the character with humanity.
Sage is a regal Queen, and as Queen of the Fairies she plays well against Pyros’ Oberon.
Wth striking looks and sonorous voice Pyros is commanding in all of his roles but it is as Oberon that he excels.
Abebe grows as a performer throughout the play and gives Hermia the right amount of gravitas in a role that could easily be trite.
Howlett and Young play well off each other as Demetrius and Lysander and are totally credible as opponents who become friends.
Helena’s speech in the woods, when she realises that she has been gaslit by her male suitors Lysander and Demetrius and questions her friendship with Hermia, surely is one of the most powerful speeches written for a woman of any time. Burton delivers it with conviction and a range of emotions.
The set (Teresa Negroponte), consisting of a broken floor to ceiling wooden backdrop also demands great physicality from the actors as they must make entrances far above the stage while exiting quickly through small nooks at stage floor level.
Being the width of the stage the set is also an imposing reminder that it represents the portal between reality and non reality of the worlds that this play inhabits.
Much of the power of A Midsummer Night’s Dream lies in its comedy and it is credit to the genius of Shakespeare that it has survived almost 500 years and still manages to keep the audiences in stitches, quite often by contrasting light and shade and juxtaposing cruelty and human frailty and pathos.
This is a crisp and delightfully funny production that will stand the test of time, as the play has done repeatedly.
