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A fresh take on an old Dream
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
The Roundhouse
TIM Supple directs a unique production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Roundhouse.
This is the first play to grace the £30 million restored Chalk Farm playhouse since it opened with De La Guarda’s spectacular gravity-defying dance extravaganza Fuerzabruta in June.
But anyone expecting a traditional performance at this venue may be waiting a long time.
Shakespeare’s drug-induced romp is transformed into a dazzling performance by dancers, musicians and acrobats from South Asia.
It is told using eight languages including Tamil, Bengali, Sanskrit and a smattering of English.
Supple’s Dream is highly charged. His lovers burned red with lust. Lysander (Chandan Sanyal) gropes and massages his Hermia (Yuki Ellias). Demetrius (Prasanna Mahagamage) manhandles his Helena (Shanaya Rafaat).
Bottom (Joy Fernandes) is, in donkey mode, appropriately endowed with something resembling a butternut squash. He brayed and grunted as the fairy queen Titania pressed against him in a red silk hammock.
Huge swathes of the text are rendered incomprehensible. It is frustrating at times. I wanted to be reminded of Puck’s giddy speeches, of Oberon’s sweet salute to his empire of butterflies and the remonstrance of Hermia to Helena.
But instead I was left feeling like a Brit abroad, lost and ignorant.
Dream virgins, few that there are, will struggle to understand the finer details of the plot. But is this not always the case with Shakespeare? There is always a language barrier, of sorts, between how we communicate ‘2day’ and the distant eloquence of the Bard.
And there is something refreshing in relying on pure performance to see you through.
Samuel Pepys described a 17th century production as “the most insipid, ridiculous play that ever I saw” and a criticism has always been that when the Dream is acted, delightful fiction is converted into a dull pantomime – that all that is finest in the play is lost in representation.
Supple’s unique production does more to shake off that mantle than anything I have seen before or am likely to see again and so comes highly recommended.
Until April 22
0870 389 1846
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