Midsummer on the Common
Jul. 26th, 2007 01:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidLast night I went to Midsummer Night's Dream on the Common. It's an abbreviated schedule this year, only a week, and the stage is much smaller too. The huge crowd that turned out for it didn't mind at all. In fact, they loved the show. Me, I was less impressed. Not a horrible show, by any means, but not nearly so good as some others I've seen (otoh, free :-).
I have the same plot issues I have every time I see this play, about Oberon's tricksiness in getting the Indian boy away from his wife, which ends up affecting the Hermia-Helena-Lysander-Demetrius quadrangle as well. I particularly dislike how it's ok for Helena to debase herself so much in pursuit of her man, who she gets only because of some flower juice. Ick. This time I ended up also thinking about how the internal playlet of Pyramus and Thisbe is the sit-com-ified version of Romeo and Juliet, minus the fighty bits.
The set was pretty plain, a raked green 'grass' polygon, one corner of it tilting up to anchor a huge balloon, which changed color for different scenes (pink and blue, also flat white and more mottled off-white for moonlight, which was pretty impressive). There's a huge trapdoor in the green, and during the major fairy bits there were sticks topped with balloons stuck into the green (very much reminiscent of the gerbera daisies from the BTW production; there were definitely actor overlaps with that show, and perhaps crew as well (as well as some ASP people, too)), but that was pretty much it for set. Of note: there were mattresses or other such things off a couple of sides of the stage, so people could fall off it.
As with most productions, the three groups had different costumes. Athenians wore white (except when getting married). The lower-class folk practicing Pyramus and Thisbe were Boston Parks Department people (including jumpsuits, at least one litter stick, and one of those little carts that isn't as small as a golf cart, but related), whose costumes for the internal playlet relied mostly on blue plastic tarp material and duct tape, plus a few well-placed balloons. The fairies wore.... well, jumpsuits with fuzzy things. Not fuzzy, much longer fringe than that, but floaty, which just made me think of Muppets. There were brilliant colors, yellow, orange, red, hot pink, black; they were all different but on the same theme. Oh, and their faces were painted, and much wiggage (wiggery?) was involved, too. Quite fantastical, but it wasn't particularly fey to me.
And that would've been fine, had they not decided to put so much techno into the show. There was music playing not only when the fairies came out, but under their dialogue, which made it harder to focus on the words, plus a driving beat is not exactly what I'd associate with them. And there were dance numbers, including some techno and some more disco-y stuff (with a disco ball). Some lines were delivered as rap. All this, added to some places where it was obvious that the actors were delivering lines, but not paying as much attention as they might to the words and punctuation, made this a less than stellar performance, despite all the fun gags. Oh, and having all the fairies sing some parts does make sense, but in practice meant that none of the words were distinct.
There were some choices that I didn't care for, but were less actively annoying to me, like the decision to have Puck sniff so much, or have Hippolyta be so disdainful of her intended on the eve of their nuptuals; it was played almost as if she were being forced into the marriage, which was unpleasant to contemplate. On the other hand, I could see how one might choose to have this pairing mirror the discord of all the others at the beginning of the play, especially because the same actors were both the city rulers and the fairy rulers.
I enjoyed the fun bits, but on the whole, preferred the BTW production. Lucky I got to see it...
I have the same plot issues I have every time I see this play, about Oberon's tricksiness in getting the Indian boy away from his wife, which ends up affecting the Hermia-Helena-Lysander-Demetrius quadrangle as well. I particularly dislike how it's ok for Helena to debase herself so much in pursuit of her man, who she gets only because of some flower juice. Ick. This time I ended up also thinking about how the internal playlet of Pyramus and Thisbe is the sit-com-ified version of Romeo and Juliet, minus the fighty bits.
The set was pretty plain, a raked green 'grass' polygon, one corner of it tilting up to anchor a huge balloon, which changed color for different scenes (pink and blue, also flat white and more mottled off-white for moonlight, which was pretty impressive). There's a huge trapdoor in the green, and during the major fairy bits there were sticks topped with balloons stuck into the green (very much reminiscent of the gerbera daisies from the BTW production; there were definitely actor overlaps with that show, and perhaps crew as well (as well as some ASP people, too)), but that was pretty much it for set. Of note: there were mattresses or other such things off a couple of sides of the stage, so people could fall off it.
As with most productions, the three groups had different costumes. Athenians wore white (except when getting married). The lower-class folk practicing Pyramus and Thisbe were Boston Parks Department people (including jumpsuits, at least one litter stick, and one of those little carts that isn't as small as a golf cart, but related), whose costumes for the internal playlet relied mostly on blue plastic tarp material and duct tape, plus a few well-placed balloons. The fairies wore.... well, jumpsuits with fuzzy things. Not fuzzy, much longer fringe than that, but floaty, which just made me think of Muppets. There were brilliant colors, yellow, orange, red, hot pink, black; they were all different but on the same theme. Oh, and their faces were painted, and much wiggage (wiggery?) was involved, too. Quite fantastical, but it wasn't particularly fey to me.
And that would've been fine, had they not decided to put so much techno into the show. There was music playing not only when the fairies came out, but under their dialogue, which made it harder to focus on the words, plus a driving beat is not exactly what I'd associate with them. And there were dance numbers, including some techno and some more disco-y stuff (with a disco ball). Some lines were delivered as rap. All this, added to some places where it was obvious that the actors were delivering lines, but not paying as much attention as they might to the words and punctuation, made this a less than stellar performance, despite all the fun gags. Oh, and having all the fairies sing some parts does make sense, but in practice meant that none of the words were distinct.
There were some choices that I didn't care for, but were less actively annoying to me, like the decision to have Puck sniff so much, or have Hippolyta be so disdainful of her intended on the eve of their nuptuals; it was played almost as if she were being forced into the marriage, which was unpleasant to contemplate. On the other hand, I could see how one might choose to have this pairing mirror the discord of all the others at the beginning of the play, especially because the same actors were both the city rulers and the fairy rulers.
I enjoyed the fun bits, but on the whole, preferred the BTW production. Lucky I got to see it...