Opera North – A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Review

I come away from Opera North’s revived production of Benjamin Britten’s adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream still trying to work out whether or not I enjoyed it.

Those things that ON, almost without exception, do well, were a triumph. The singing was splendid, the orchestra (conducted by Garry Walker) superb.

As for the set and costumes. Well, interesting. The forest is represented by hanging strips of translucent Perspex. Towards the summit of these strips we have an moveable array of transparent Perspex balloons – the shifting clouds? The swaying arboreal canopy?

Their fairy majesties, Oberon and Tytania (in Britten’s version pronounced like ‘titanic’), are bedecked like giant glitter balls, the metallic chain mail of their costumes reflecting the spotlights back at the audience as they move. It’s magical to be intermittently dazzled by their glory, or irritating to have to squint so regularly – take your pick.

Puck – a speaking not a singing part – fawns like a doting pet around his master Oberon, as often at his feet as at his side. Vocally and physically Daniel Abelson plays the mischievous fairy like some hybrid of Keith Allen and Caliban. Not so much the “gentle Robin,” Oberon addresses.

For the greater part of the performance, audience laughter is sporadic. The humour is forced, heavy-handed even occasionally vulgar (the bewitched Lysander leg-humping Helena like a randy spaniel is a bit too Joe Orton). That said, the crowd is enthusiastically behind the Mechanicals’ play, later on.

Britten’s score recognises that the play is both funny and touching. When, in Act Three, the young Athenian lovers finally get their emotions unscrambled the music and the singing cascade beautiful sounds out into the auditorium. If only direction had enabled us to care more about Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander up to that point. Having performers, intentionally or inadvertently, stripping down to their underwear is no guarantee of sending the laugh-o-meter into the red zone. True, these four young lovers are ludicrous in their passions and their antics, but they must also be loveable. The production falls short on that latter requirement.

Similarly, when Tytania dotes on Bottom the Ass, the intimacy between this grotesque and ridiculous hybrid and the narcotically-demented yet magnificent fairy queen should simultaneously amuse and disturb us. The staging of this episode is stilted and so lacking interaction between the two characters as to undermine any sense of either emotion.

Shakespeare’s playful presentation of the Mechanicals, whilst making merciless fun of them, also recognised the truth in their hopes and fears (such a performance before the great and the powerful could make or break these simple men). The cavorting, fumbling, desperate enthusiasms of tonight’s group only occasionally offer unfamiliar delights; they may be clowns in our eyes but we also need to see them as vulnerable, inadequate but sincere. (The group hug they share when their play is ‘preferred’ is original, affecting and funny – if only we could have had more of this kind of creativity).

My companion for the evening says, “you can just close your eyes and listen to the music.” Wise words, indeed.

Henry Waddington booms compellingly as Nick Bottom, a veritable steamroller of excess enthusiasm.

Of the young Athenians (each of whom grabs her or his own moment to shine) Peter Kirk’s Lysander snatches the bouquet by his fingertips from the other three, though I look forward to future roles for Camilla Harris (Helena), Sian Griffiths (Hermia) and James Newby (Demetrius).

It was an inspired choice of the composer to make Oberon a counter-tenor. James Laing’s natural physical presence adds an other-worldly quality to his performance. Britten also set Tytania’s voice in the higher range. Daisy Brown aces her high C# (“Come now a roundel”) with apparent ease, and moves through the evening with regal command.

An utter treat for the ears, less so for the eyes, but, on the whole, well met.

Opera North – A Midsummer Night’s Dream was at Lowry, Salford on 13 November 2024.