A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Scottish OperaGlasgow – 22 February 2022
Kelvin Holdsworth
As the curtain rises, we are faced with a proscenium arch within a proscenium arch – presumably a nod to the play within a play that concludes the Dream. We are drawn straight into director Dominic Hill’s comfort zone –a big open stage with wide open wings. Above and beyond the stage, large beds float in the air which will become part of the business later on and the inner arch forms the frame for a hall of mirrors – mirrors which were to become problematic as the evening unfolded.
Benjamin Britten’s version of Shakespeare’s play puts the territory of a fairies firmly at the centre of the action. The piece opens, not with Theseus and Hippolyta but with Oberon and Titania. It is thus somewhat disconcerting for the curtain to go up on a freeze-frame scene involving the mortal lovers. It was a puzzling way to begin and there was no real explanation of what had been glimpsed by the end of the evening.
The fairies were not puzzling though – they were magical, weird and vocal. The whole evening featured strong singing from the cast, particularly from the children’s chorus. This wasn’t a sugar-coated dream that these children were taking part in either. The children were as strange and as creepy as children could be. They sang like linties and made fairyland come alive.
The only non-singing part in the piece is that of Puck. Michael Guest was all a Puck should be. Sexy, funny, anarchic – a young man so full of trouble you couldn’t resist him.
Standout performances from the singers include Catriona Hewitson’s acid-tongued Tytania and David Shipley’s over-eager Bottom, around whom a great comedy cast of mechanicals had been assembled.
There’s a lot of fun to be had and some genuinely surprising stage magic. Nothing is quite what it seems and there was sparkling creativity on display, particularly during the first act.
However, the mirrored set was also sending light sparkling round the theatre but not in such a good way. The wonderful thing about mirrors is that they reflect light. However, on stage, the awful thing about mirrors is that they reflect light. As various mirrored doors opened, light from bright stage-lights bounced around the stalls and from the seat I was sitting in, there were at times, three ghost images of the conductor in view as the mirrored panels reflected monitors placed to allow the singers to see him. It was busy and distracting and made worse when a bright on-stage spotlight was used during the inner-play, temporarily blinding members of the audience caught in its beams.
The music was fabulous though. Down in the pit, all was well. Stuart Stratford got a sharp, slick and precise performance from the orchestra.
The production has a lot going for it. The delight of the audience to be seeing a main-stage opera performance after the last two years was palpable.
This Dream has been a long time coming and has genuine magic running right through from beginning to end. Not perfect, but enchanting.
Three and a half stars ***(*)
Theatre Royal Glasgow: 22 to 26 February 2022
Festival Theatre Edinburgh: 1 to 5 March 2022