A Midsummer Night's Dream review: You can't see the forest for the very stylish trees
The curious thing about this ENO Midsummer Night’s Dream revival is that it is not of the 2011 production by Christopher Alden but of the previous 1995 staging by Robert Carsen.
Alden shone a light on the dark forest of sexual urges, highlighting perceived homoerotic undercurrents in Britten’s opera. Carsen’s production, by contrast, is unequivocally heterosexual in orientation, which doesn’t necessarily prove an advantage.
Its virtues lie, as before, elsewhere: in Michael Levine’s stunning designs, superbly lit by Carsen and Peter van Praet, and Matthew Bourne’s choreography. Levine’s sylvan setting is a spectacularly beautiful evocation of apple green and cobalt blue.
In the first act a huge, white-sheeted bed extends invitingly across the stage. Later, beds are hoisted high above the stage and in a breathtaking coup, the whole thing is eventually whisked away to leave a glistening white stage area, signifying the end of the dream and a return to the courtly world of Theseus.
The fairies are dressed fetchingly in green tailcoats, blue trousers and wigs, with natty moustaches and red gloves. Bourne’s stylish choreography casts them as waiters, doing Tytania’s bidding.
Though the associate director, Emmanuelle Bastet, was credited with this revival, Carsen was also in evidence. Whoever was responsible, the direction of the first two acts was feeble: the character interactions unimaginatively handled, the humour misfiring. Things looked up in the final act, when the troupe of rustics, led by Joshua Bloom’s Bottom and stage-managed by Graeme Danby’s Quince, drew appreciative laughter with their am-dram routine.
The best opera to see in 2018
Five members of ENO’s Harewood Artists Programme took part, including Soraya Mafi (excellent as Tytania), with fine performances also from Eleanor Dennis (Helena), Matthew Durkan (Demetrius), David Webb (Lysander) and Andri Björn Róbertsson (Theseus). Clare Presland was admirable as Helena, and Christopher Ainslie, initially lacking vocal authority as Oberon, gained strength in the final act. Miltos Yerolemou is a rough-hewn, athletic, amusingly gaff-prone Puck.
Alexander Soddy made an impressive ENO debut on the podium. The slithering chromatics invoking the fairy magic at the beginning were positively queasy, though their incipient menace was hardly realised in what we saw on stage.
