Writer: William Shakespeare
Adapted by: Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears
Composer: Benjamin Britten
Director: Martin Duncan
Opera North’s touring production arrives in Salford in a dank, dreary November for a one night stand, with a glimpse of a midsummer which barely seems to have happened in these parts. Unless in a dream.
Arguably Shakespeare’s best-loved play provided a ready-made libretto for Benjamin Britten to launch the 1960 Aldeburgh Festival with an opera premiere. Some of the magic of the original stage play has transferred to the opera, which has become a staple of the musical calendar around the world.
The opera is almost slavishly faithful to Shakespeare’s original, and has benefitted from fewer cuts than most modern productions. Perhaps the addition of a musical score makes it harder to trim? Anyway, as Athens prepares for the marriage of Duke Theseus and his captive Amazon Queen, Hippolyta, two sets of lovers head into the woods. Unbeknown to them, they are sharing the forest with the warring King and Queen of the Fairies, Oberon and Titania, and a guild of Athenian artisans rehearsing a play they hope to perform at the Duke’s nuptial feast. The confusions between these magical and mortal actors provides a series of comic interactions, largely driven by the interventions of Puck, the mischievous sprite who serves as henchman to the Fairy King.
Britten wrote the opera in 1960, and Opera North have looked to the period for inspiration. Costumes fizz with lurid psychedelic colours for the humans, while fairy royalty shine out in irridescent metallic costumes. The fairies themselves, all children, may be intended to echo one of John Wyndham’s darker novels, but with their identical silver mop-top wigs also carry far too great a resemblance to Joanna Lumley as Purdey in the 1970’s New Avengers. The set is dressed with translucent Perspex and giant bubbles to create a far-out space-age forest. Austin Powers does not quite make the cast list.
This lava lamp landscape sounds as if it should not work, but it does. Why would we expect a naturalistic forest set when we are expected to believe in fairies, love potions, and a man being turned into an ass? The Perspex panels, balloons and gauze screen create an alien world where such unnatural events come to life, heightened by lighting which creates its own mood music for each scene.
Musically, this is one of Britten’s most eclectic pieces, as befits a drama that spans the fairy kingdom, the royal household, young lovers, and rough and ready artisans. The score tries to reflect the mood of each scene, but sometimes undercuts it to indicate a darker aspect, or gently mocks it with a pastiche or parody of another composer’s excesses. The artisans lapse into barbershop, while the fairies mimic the school recorder group. There is no tragic element, but there is jeopardy, and even menace in the control that Oberon maintains over the fawning, gambolling Puck, and inflicts on his erring wife, Tytania. That this exuberant world carries a dark side is also indicated by the black wings of the angelic fairy band, and Puck’s lairy antics and hairy legs, hinting at some links to a line of satyrs.
The singing and orchestration do full justice to the challenge of the opera. Daisy Brown’s Tytania brings both regal elegance and raunchy humour to the role. Henry Waddington sqeezes every ounce of buffoonery from the role of Bottom. He is brilliantly supported by his mechanical mates in their Bergamasque dance, a cross between the birdie dance and YMCA. Special mention goes to Nicholas Watts, as Francis Flute, whose dance moves as Thisby come close to stealing the show, and Colin Judson as Snout, whose dissonant baritone notes enriched every scene.
James Laing, as Oberon, exudes power and control as a stage prescence, but his counter tenor delivery undermines the gravitas of his position, and his sparring duets with Tytania become a very uneven grudge match. The human lovers are well served by the transfer to the operatic form. In Shakespeare, Demetrius and Lysander are almost interchangeable, a fact made more obvious by the inconstancy in their relationships with Hermia and Helena. Britten has created a brilliant demarcation by making one a tenor and the other a bass, giving Peter Kirk and James Newby scope to flesh out their individuality.
There is a saying that “If you can remember the ’60’s, you really weren’t there.” This may be true. For this production, to anchor it so specifically to the era and strive to hook in visual references to drug use and contemporary culture, does the work no favours. This opera, after 64 years, needs no such crutches to stand on its own two feet.
Plays at The Lowry on 13th November, then at the Theatre Royal, Nottingham on 20th November.
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Magical!
