Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, after Shakespeare
Opera North
Grand Theatre, Leeds
October 12-November 20, 2024 & 2025: 3 hrs 15 mins
(also on October 19,24,31 at Leeds Grand Theatre; November 6 at Newcastle Theatre Royal; November 13 at The Lowry, Salford, and November 20 at Nottingham Theatre Royal)
Jokes by Shakespeare, music by Benjamin Britten – what’s not to like? Opera North’s 2008 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is back for a second revival and every bit as good as before.
Martin Duncan, the original director, along with Johan Engels, the designer, had the idea of re-creating the Bard’s enchanted forest as a late 1960s world of Perspex, bright colours and plastic bubbles in the sky – not quite in-period as early Sixties (the piece was written in 1959-60), but as good a way of taking us to another dimension as any. It’s been directed for the revival by Matthew Eberhardt, in complete sympathy with the concept and with all the fun that Shakespeare created in the scenes for the rude mechanicals putting on their performance of the “most lamentable comedy” of Pyramus and Thisbe.
The fairies are mysterious children in white clothes and blonde wigs like those in the first film version of Village of the Damned (based on John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos) – which was an aspect of the original staging under Britten’s supervision – and Oberon and Tytania (James Laing and Daisy Brown) are in brightly reflective metallic garb, almost like imaginary space-dwellers.
All the comedy is straight from the original play, as Britten and his only colleague in the creation of the libretto, Peter Pears, had the sense to take it unaltered, just abridging it (dropping the opening framing device of Theseus and Hippolyta, though they appear at the end to watch the amateur theatricals) and adding only a single line of their own to replace that.
Garry Walker conducts the Orchestra of Opera North in a reading that transports us to the land of fairies and sprites in an instant (almost inaudible at first) and crisply supports the singers while never overwhelming them.
The casting is notable for its quartet of quality young voices (Sian Griffiths, James Newby, Camilla Harris and Peter Kirk) as the lovers Hermia, Demetrius, Helena and Lysander, and some very comic performances from the mechanicals (Dean Robinson as Peter Quince, Nicholas Watts as Francis Flute, Frazer Scott as Snug the joiner, Colin Judson as Snout the tinker and Nicholas Butterfield as Starveling the tailor) – and principally Henry Waddington as Bottom the weaver. “It shall be called Bottom’s Dream” is his version of his escapade, and in truth the whole show is very much his showpiece, appearing as he has in the role each time this production has been seen.
There's an acrobatic speaking role for Puck - again taken by Daniel Abelson, as weird and crazy as before. In total, never a dull moment.
More info and tickets here
