Musical, magical, mystical comedy fit for a Fairy King & Queen.
📍 Festival Theatre, Edinburgh
📅 TUE 01 MAR TO SAT 05 MAR 2022
🕖 Evenings, 7.15pm
🕖 Running time (approx.): 3 hours 15 minutes (incl. two intervals)
👥 Director: Dominic Hill
👥 Composer: Benjamin Britten
👥 Librettist: Peter Pears
👥 Set & Costume Designer: Tom Piper
👥 Lighting Designer: Lizzie Powell
💰 From £22.50
🎭 Audio Description: Sat 05 March 7.15PM
🎭 Captioned subtitles available on most Scottish Opera productions
First witnessed in 1960, Benjamin Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream found immediately popularity, and a place in the canon of popular modern opera. On the evidence of this latest staging by Scottish Opera, one can most definitely see why.
The piece opens with strife afoot in the fairy realm: Oberon, King of the Fae (Lawrence Zazzo), covets Queen Titania’s (Catriona Hewitson) young charge, a changeling boy (a terrific puppet designed by Rachael Canning) inherited upon the death of a worshipper. Their capricious conflict shall span a single night, spilling out from the unseen world to enfold the fates of mortals who chance to enter into their forested domain.
Britten, and librettist Peter Pears, jettison most of William Shakespeare’s first act, sending the Bard’s four Athenian “lovers” almost direct to the woods to play out their affairs of the heart. Hermia (Lea Shaw), and Lysander (Elgan Llŷr Thomas) are fleeing her father’s legal right to enforce her marriage to another, Demetrius (Jonathan McGovern), also in love with Hermia follows on, himself pursued by Helena (Charlie Drummond) and her unidirectional affections. In some other part of this silvan kingdom, a group of rustic would-be actors gather to plan a play fit to perform at the forthcoming nuptial celebrations of local ruler Theseus (Jonathan Lemalu) and his intended Hippolyta (Annie Reilly).
As with Shakespeare, Britten’s drama is technically set in, and around Athens at some undisclosed point in history, but this makes very little odds to proceedings. William’s Athens’ based fist act is gone, and Theseus and his intended will only appear in the opera’s penultimate scenes to tidy up the narrative. These losses notwithstanding, Shakespeare’s text survives essentially intact, the play’s poetry carefully conserved, though at times cleverly re-distributed to empower the child-chorus of attending fairies.
The result is not a little fabulous.
Director Dominic Hill shows a sure hand, and a delicate touch in crafting a grand fairy tale to delight the audience. Framed within Tom Piper’s elegantly understated, and fluidly adaptable set, the expansive cast (there are 19 named roles), take the stage with evident joy.
The three narrative strands: fairy dispute, lovers quadrangle, and rustic theatrics, though largely separate, still knit together, playing over and under each other’s strands, colliding rarely, but with fascinating results.
Just in case the originating play is unknown to you, the specifics of the plot shan’t appear here.
Suffice to say that Oberon via his hench-boy Puck (Michael Guest) obtains a magic flower, the juice of which, spread upon a victim’s sleeping eyes will make them love the first thing they see upon waking. With this he intends to teach proud Titania a lesson, but spares a petal for Puck, charging him to straighten out the muddled love affairs of the Athenians wandering his woods.
Mistakes will be made, innocent actors will be transformed, Titania will be suborned, and all with calamitous, joyful, and witty consequences.
Each principal delivers in spades, ably led by monarchs for the evening: internationally acclaimed counter-tenor Zazzo haunts the stage, his voice ethereal, yet puissant; and crystal-sharp coloratura Soprano Hewiston who dazzles with a character-rich performance. The Children’s Chorus make a splendid band of fairies indeed, their pure, unbroken voices juxtaposing youthful innocence with the impurities of adult misadventures. Guest makes a tumbling, anarchic fool of Puck, the only spoken role in the show, whilst clearly savouring the imp’s iconic lines.
The Orchestra of Scottish Opera, under conductor Stuart Stratford, do absolute justice to Britten’s fascinating sound world of a score. It dances amidst chords to create a shifting other-world, to contrast with the warmer, romantic tones of the lovers, and the simpler motifs of the rustic actors. The Orchestra are smashing throughout, from the delicate bounce of tuned percussion, to rich strings, and sonorous brass. As with much modern classical music, the score is unlikely to find its way onto humming lips: this is a tonal spa in which to bathe your acoustic nerves.
The fairy realm itself is rendered in a twilight gothic, its denizens pale faced, and shabbily coiffured. Through it wander mortals attired in pyjamas, negotiating a forest created from floating beds, and entangling sheets. Piper’s adumbral palette, and Lizzie Powell’s subtle, and impeccable lighting creates both Whislter-esque nocturne, and a ballroom fit for Van Gogh.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, looks and sounds beautiful, but just as importantly it’s also darn funny. None of the play’s comedy is lost, indeed some is notably enhanced, particularly when the rustic thespians finally perform their play for our company of Athenian nobles. Chiming laughter rolls in waves from the stalls when Bottom (David Shipley), Quince (John Molloy), Flute (Glen Cunningham), Snug (Dingle Yandell), Snout (Jamie MacDougall), and Starveling (Arthur Bruce) take to a stage within the stage. Not always the most popular segment of the Opera during its decades of staging, Scottish Opera dial absurd up to 11, and make of it an unmistakable triumph in its own right.
A Midsummer Night’s dream is another excellent production from Scottish Opera, one which deserves packed houses, and thunderous applause. If you’ve never been to the opera, or for some reason think it’s not meant for you, try this out, I can’t guarantee you’ll love it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if you did.
For tickets, and more information on this production, please click here.
You have till the 5th of March to see the production in Edinburgh.
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