Classical and Jazz - Christopher Alden’s new operatic production for ENO of A Midsummer Night's Dream
Published: 26 May 2011
By MICHAEL MAUNSELL
A MIDSUMMER Night’s Dream charts the fortunes of two couples who cross the paths of Oberon and Tytania, fairy king and queen, and encounter the mistakes of Oberon’s will-o’-the-wisp, Puck. All comes right at the end when the Duke, Theseus, and the two couples marry.
Christopher Alden’s new production for ENO of Benjamin Britten’s opera is set in the yard of a boys’ school – with a few girls in the sixth form. Theseus is identified with Puck at the very start and the piece becomes his dream, or memories.
The school is dysfunctional: feuding teachers (Oberon and Tytania), abuse, drugs and bullying. There are times when the text, which refers to woods and green banks, is seriously at odds with what the characters are doing.
The English National Opera orchestra, enhanced in the string section for this large theatre, perform magnificently under Leo Hussain, who caresses the score so that the sections for the fairies are light and magical and completely different from those for humans and is a real delight.
To be faced with an announcement that the lead and his understudy are both ill, which was the case on the first night, is a nightmare. However, William Towers, who made a hasty trip from rehearsals elsewhere, sang the part of Oberon beautifully from the side while Iestyn Davies acted the role. Overall the singing was very good. The lovers were well-matched with Allan Clayton Lysander, said at the outset to be recovering from a cold, excellent.
However, the music was not always enhanced by the setting; the Act 3 quartet where the lovers wake and get their pairings sorted out is normally a dramatic high point; singing as they walk around a maze formed of hurdles does not help the emotion.
The play performed before the Duke by the “mechanicals”, as Shakespeare called them, is as good in this production as any you will see – side-splittingly funny. It was led by bass baritone Sir Willard White as Bottom, celebrating his 35th anniversary with ENO.
Normally one is clear that the dream which Shakespeare and Britten are celebrating is Bottom’s. When he wakes Bottom sings “it is past the wit of man to say what dream it was”, which could be a summing up of the production.
• Further performances: May 28 May, June 3, 11, 17 23, 25 and 30. Coliseum, St Martin’s Lane, WC2, ENO box office: 0871 911 0200