Midwinter Midsummer
Feb. 5th, 2007 05:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThursday night I went to the first performance of BTW's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream (Shakespeare). I knew it wouldn't be a standard production as soon as I saw the set: a moveable plinth angled in on one side, a tall "sapling" that was just a long branch (some others farther back), a claw-footed bathtub angled in from the other side, and most of the rest of the area with lots of bright red Gerbera daisy-style flowers sticking up. Not what I'd think of first for this play.
edit And how could I forget the armless clock high on the wall, the timeless moon? /edit
The second indication it would be interesting was in the program: there were only eight actors. Each actor had a couple of roles, and how they chose to match them was interesting, with one actor playing Hippolyta and Oberon, another playing Theseus and Titania. All the young lovers also fairies and in the workers' play-within-the-play, as were Puck and Demetrius. It's not a production filled with spectacle: the changes were effected with simple costume differences. Athenians all wore dark overcoats. Workers had mechanics-type shirts with their names on them (except for the actor who also played Puck; his name tag said "Robin," which I thought a nice touch) and rubber rain boots. Fairies wore silk bathrobes over the basic leotard-like costumes (royalty getting flowers as well). And the play-within-a-play got their own costumes, of course, and used to great advantage, too.
The gender flopping in the two royal couples was interesting, oddly not as strange as I would have thought. I had more of an issue with Hippolyta not giving any kind of impression of Amazonian-ness; I'm not sure how that would've been done, given that the actor is not as tall as her partner, and is a middle-aged white woman.
There are bits of the play I never care for (Hermia running after a guy who despises her for that long, Oberon duping his queen just to get a boy she has reason to keep), but this time those were small annoyances as the play flowed on. The Pyramus-Thisbe play was done amazingly well, lots of physical humor; I was not the only one helplessly laughing. My least favorite part was how the fairies were chosen to be played, since their slithering sensuality didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the show. Puck was also a sensual fairy, but his interactions were more straightforward, his movements more precise, and it made a difference (OK, and his shoulders, etc, were quite nice to look at).
Definitely worth seeing.
I knew I'd recognize at least one of the actors, since Hippolyta/Oberon was Paula Plum, who I've seen in many ASP shows. Risher Reddick (Demetrius/Flute) is also an ASPer (ASPic?). Elizabeth Hayes (Helena) was in other BTW shows I've seen. Angie Jepson (Hermia) looked familiar, and it turns out some of that was from seeing her as a grad student at Brandeis. Timothy John Smith (Theseus/Titania) is the director at Redfeather (they do outdoor summer Shakespeare in Worcester; I like their low-key shows). Robert Pemberton (Bottom) I'd seen at the Publick. It feels like a very small world....
edit And how could I forget the armless clock high on the wall, the timeless moon? /edit
The second indication it would be interesting was in the program: there were only eight actors. Each actor had a couple of roles, and how they chose to match them was interesting, with one actor playing Hippolyta and Oberon, another playing Theseus and Titania. All the young lovers also fairies and in the workers' play-within-the-play, as were Puck and Demetrius. It's not a production filled with spectacle: the changes were effected with simple costume differences. Athenians all wore dark overcoats. Workers had mechanics-type shirts with their names on them (except for the actor who also played Puck; his name tag said "Robin," which I thought a nice touch) and rubber rain boots. Fairies wore silk bathrobes over the basic leotard-like costumes (royalty getting flowers as well). And the play-within-a-play got their own costumes, of course, and used to great advantage, too.
The gender flopping in the two royal couples was interesting, oddly not as strange as I would have thought. I had more of an issue with Hippolyta not giving any kind of impression of Amazonian-ness; I'm not sure how that would've been done, given that the actor is not as tall as her partner, and is a middle-aged white woman.
There are bits of the play I never care for (Hermia running after a guy who despises her for that long, Oberon duping his queen just to get a boy she has reason to keep), but this time those were small annoyances as the play flowed on. The Pyramus-Thisbe play was done amazingly well, lots of physical humor; I was not the only one helplessly laughing. My least favorite part was how the fairies were chosen to be played, since their slithering sensuality didn't seem to fit in with the rest of the show. Puck was also a sensual fairy, but his interactions were more straightforward, his movements more precise, and it made a difference (OK, and his shoulders, etc, were quite nice to look at).
Definitely worth seeing.
I knew I'd recognize at least one of the actors, since Hippolyta/Oberon was Paula Plum, who I've seen in many ASP shows. Risher Reddick (Demetrius/Flute) is also an ASPer (ASPic?). Elizabeth Hayes (Helena) was in other BTW shows I've seen. Angie Jepson (Hermia) looked familiar, and it turns out some of that was from seeing her as a grad student at Brandeis. Timothy John Smith (Theseus/Titania) is the director at Redfeather (they do outdoor summer Shakespeare in Worcester; I like their low-key shows). Robert Pemberton (Bottom) I'd seen at the Publick. It feels like a very small world....