A Midsummer Night's Dream
Review
A Midsummer Night's Dream
David Nixon's fabulous adaptation of A Midsummer Night's Dream plays upon the drama's central distinction between the "real" and the "imaginary" by constructing the scenario around a touring ballet group.
Just as Northern Ballet Theatre must themselves have done, the troupe rehearse in preparation for their tour to Edinburgh. This self-referential framing device is an innovative means of introducing the play's various love trysts, but it also lends the ballet an extra comic note by satirising the notoriously incestuous relationships that occur between cast members.
A sleeper train bridges the gap between waking and sleeping, neatly tying together the central themes in two gloriously constructed scenes which build their success upon the spectacular set. A series of rotating panels delineate the cabin doors and interiors, replete with bunk beds that are fought over by love rivals Demetrius and Lysander.
Art director Theseus's dream as Oberon is signified by the emergence of a smoke-shrouded stage, in which the drab 1940s outfits give way to exquisitely decorated costumes, and the stark lighting of the rehearsal space is replaced by sumptuous reds and blues. A pair of beds are suspended from the ceiling and a giant eye serves both as a door into the alternate world and as the location of Titania's boudoir.
The performance combines impressive pointe-work with smatterings of other styles, such as tap, for the purposes of characterisation. Superb romantic duets between Principal Artists Keiko Amemori and Hironao Takahashi as Oberon and Titania are, at times, simply breathtaking.
But it is the brilliant choreography and the expressive movements of the dancers that make this production such a stylish rendering of the Shakespearean classic. The ballet successfully translates the comic elements of the original into dance form to create moments that are truly hilarious. Victoria Sibson's Puck—a character she dances with highly stylised, Charlie Chaplain-like movements—is wonderfully mischievous and delightful to watch.
The grapplings of the four lovers as they compete for each other's affections are high points in the second act. Drawing heavily from slapstick comedy, the dancers creatively exploit the set's potential, hopping in and out of bed, hiding underneath it, and chasing each other across the stage.
Dialogue punctuates the action just a few times, in the opening and closing acts, but serves only to disrupt the flow of the ballet, rather than enhance the drama. David Nixon's intelligent choreography more than adequately narrates the complex twists and turns of Shakespeare's play, and his language of movement is only momentarily hampered by the introduction of the spoken word.
A Midsummer Night's Dream, dir. David Nixon: Festival Theatre, 6 March
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