Reviewed by James
Karas
The Aix-en-Provence
Festival has brought back Robert Carsen’s 1991 production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream and one can only be grateful for the reprise.
Midsummer is one of
Shakespeare’s most lyrical, poetic and funny plays and most people have views
about it from the theater. Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears kept
about half of Shakespeare’s text and fashioned an opera with some sinewy and
melodic music that is worthy of the bard’s poetry. The play deals with spirits
who need ethereal music, lovers who deserve romantic notes and rustics who
demand down to earth tunes. Britten provides them all.
Carsen and Set Designer Michael Levine take their inspiration from the title and create an atmosphere that is indeed a dream.
The entire stage of
the Théâtre de l’Archevêché is a converted into a huge bed covered with a green blanket. That is where people usually dream. Later in the play the one bed is replaced with several beds and at one time the beds are hoisted up in the air. This is a world of fairies, miraculous
transformations, love and some artisans rehearsing a play, all taking place in
the forest.
We have the fairies Oberon (Lawrence Zazzo) and Tytania (Sandrine Piau) quarreling and he
decides to punish her by applying the juice of a flower to her eyes that will make her fall in love with the
first creature that she sees. Countertenor Zazzo and soprano Piau make a
marvelous couple in war and peace.
We have two Athenian couples in the forest who are quarreling about who
loves whom. Lysander (Rupert Charlesworth) loves Hermia (Elizabeth DeShong) but
so does Demetrius (John Chest). Helena (Layla Claire) loves Demetrius but the
magic juice makes Lysander fall in love with her. Don’t worry about the details
but the foursome will treat you to a lovers’ quarrel that is simply hilarious
as well as musically wonderful.
The artisans of Athens go to the forest to rehearse Pyramus and Thisbe a play that they want to put on for the wedding celebrations
of Theseus (Scott Conner) and Hippolyta (Allyson McHardy). This is a chance for
broad comedy and Carsen makes the best use of it. Brindley Sherratt is a
hilarious Bottom, a braggadocio who wants to play all the roles in the play. He
is the one who is turned into an ass and Tytania falls in love with him.
Scene from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Photo copyright: Patrick Berger
Brian Bannatyne-Scott plays the illiterate Snug who gets to play the lion
in a funny but also touching way.
Miltos Yerolemou
practically steals the show in the non-singing role of Puck. He is the
mischievous creature who puts the juice in the eyes of the sleeping Tytania and
in the eyes of the wrong lover thus causing comic havoc. Yerolemou practically
flies around the stage and has enough comic talent to almost upstage first-rate
opera singers.
The Trinity Boys Choir make marvelous fairies and even better singers.
Britten composed some beautiful music for them.
The Orchestre de l’Opéra national de Lyon under Kazushi Ono and the
cast with the Choir provide an evening that is full of charm, poetry and music
– the sort of thing perhaps that one can only experience in a dream.
______
A Midsummer Night’s
Dre by Benjamin Britten opened
on July 4 and will be performed seven times until July 20, 2015 at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com
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