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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2017 9:05:52 GMT
Saw the second preview - its very good Done straight through - aiming at 2 hours, last night was about 2 hours 10 plus a late start Stage is a giant mud pit, cast get gradually filthy through the evening. Reminded me of Monty Python's Batley Townswomen's Guild reenacting the battle of Pearl Harbour Other than the setting actually a fairly straightforward approach to the plot, although brings out the disturbing nature of some of the events rather than treating it as light comedy. Takes some very interesting directions at the end which I've not seen done that way before Key one is that Bottom and Hippolyta / Titania start to recognise each other, and Pyramus' death speech is done "straight" and directed at Hippolyta. Don't wear your best clothes if you're in the front row. No mud landed on me but it does get churned up and thrown around a lot |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2017 10:34:25 GMT
Robert Lepage directed the play in the Olivier in an NT production on a fully-mudded stage in a dark production which divided the critics and audiences. Rupert Graves was one of the male lovers.
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Post by rockinrobin on Feb 18, 2017 12:41:42 GMT
Ah, thank you so much, Xanderl! Looking forward greatly to seeing it next weekend. I have absolutely no idea where I'm sitting (got myself one of these "Lucky Dip" tickets) but will make sure to leave my best dress at home!
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2017 15:34:45 GMT
Robert Lepage directed the play in the Olivier in an NT production on a fully-mudded stage in a dark production which divided the critics and audiences. Rupert Graves was one of the male lovers. This was one of the first productions I ever saw and I thought it was bloody fantastic and still have really fond memories of it |
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Post by Deleted on Feb 18, 2017 15:38:06 GMT
This was one of the first productions I ever saw and I thought it was bloody fantastic and still have really fond memories of it Good to hear! It rained a lot too, didn't it? The mud-and-rain was a real environment for the play, much more interesting than some twee scene-setting. |
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Post by bellboard27 on Feb 25, 2017 17:48:25 GMT
Went this afternoon. 2 hours exactly straight through. Great fun. Very pleased to have caught it.
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Post by Jan on Feb 27, 2017 22:00:01 GMT
I thought overall this was good and the Mechanicals very good with a genuinely fresh and different interpretation of Bottom.
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Post by mallardo on Mar 1, 2017 17:56:08 GMT
I didn't like it. It was a deeply cynical take on the play - not dark, just drab. I have no idea why the mud pit although it did allow for Demetrius and Lysander to really go at it in their fights and it was effective for humbling Helena and, particularly, Hermia, by shoving their faces in it. It's a production that's determined to erase any magical elements in order to remind us - if we needed reminding - that the world is a sh*tty place.
I did not find the mechanicals funny and thought the approach to Bottom was ghastly - no fault of Leo Bill's, he was under orders. Some of the sight gags would have been rejected by the Three Stooges as beneath them. No, I really didn't like it.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 1, 2017 18:01:39 GMT
. . . . and thought the approach to Bottom was ghastly . . .  |
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Post by David J on Mar 1, 2017 18:27:29 GMT
Were you at today's matinee as well mallardo?
I can't say this was perfect either, though the groups of students that were in were certainly enjoying it more than me.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is an exhausting play to trudge through with no interval. Only the Lyric Hammersmith the 1 hour 45 minute version flew by for me, better than the RSC tour last year where the first act alone was too long.
Here it didn't help that there were these awkward pauses to generate laughter and as much as the singing is nice those moments slowed down proceedings
Oh and I certainly wasn't a fan of the..."ass"...costume for Bottom
But I liked the downer approach to the play. As much as I like the play, I've always liked to see a production address the potential consequences of the mind altering flower juice. Pyramus and Thisbe was funny as usual, but watching the mechanicals making fools of themselves was no different to watching the experience the lovers went through in the woods, though on a more traumatising level. Initially the lovers were standing at the sides shellshocked, but gradually they were relating to this farcical amateur show they were watching
Personally I found the Lyric Hammersmith handled the disturbing undertones of the play with alacrity, but I appreciated the bleak approach Gibbons took for this. |
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Post by mallardo on Mar 1, 2017 18:41:35 GMT
David, yes, I was upstairs among the students - who were all immaculately behaved, I have to say. And you're right, they loved it - so maybe it's just me?
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Post by jek on Mar 1, 2017 19:06:04 GMT
My 17 year old son went to see this with his sixth form college last week. He really enjoyed it. My partner, who went to pick him up from the Young Vic said that all the students were outside animatedly discussing it when he got there. I guess that for most of them (my son included) it will have been the first production of Midsummer Night's Dream they had seen.
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Post by rockinrobin on Mar 2, 2017 11:43:00 GMT
I must say I enjoyed it (except for obnoxious couple behind me, snogging and giggling all the time - UGH! I mean, I know it's a play about love but you don't necessarily have to consummate your relationship whilst watching it... or am I just being grumpy?). I'm still not sure about Bottom (hated the costume) and Rude Mechanicals in general, but I love Michael Gould's charisma, in my humble opinion he steals the show a little bit. And I love John Dagleish, of course (forgive me, but he does look so very good when covered in mud). That was my third "Midsummer Night's Dream", after 2 Globe versions - 2013 and 2016 - and it was very interesting to see a different take on this play, much darker and cynical, a bit disturbing. I also found it very sensual. It is a nightmare rather than a dream, that's true. It's not the best adaptation ever, that's also true. But I think it's well worth watching.
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Post by Steve on Mar 7, 2017 12:18:12 GMT
An abject (and object) lesson in how to make the funny unfunny, I hated this. Some spoilers follow. . . As with much comedy, Shakespeare gets laughs by subverting highfalutin notions, especially romantic love, with base ones. The higher a production of this play builds the tower of romantic love's pretensions, the greater the shock and surprise of the comedy the tower makes as it clatters to the ground. Joe Hill-Gibbins has no handle on Shakespeare's humour, so he builds us a filthy dirty muddy crass concept of romantic love, leaving himself with no notion to subvert over the course of the play. Since the tower of love has already tumbled from the opening of the play, as we witness the actors sploshing around in mud in the opening scene, Shakespeare's comedy is itself subverted and destroyed. Hill-Gibbins fondness for desecration can work in non-comedy settings. His dirtying up of "The Changeling," which included great sploshing food fights, also at The Young Vic, seemed to illuminate the essential filth at the heart of that play. But if Hill-Gibbins is going to desecrate a comedy, tossing away it's raison d'etre, he'd better replace all those lost laughs with something else worth watching. If he thinks that showing us that love is akin to rape is a revelation, he's wrong. That is already apparent in Shakespeare's design, so all Hill-Gibbins achieves is to reveal Shakespeare's design too early. I think what might be going on is akin to an acting exercise, where Hill-Gibbins is trying to break down both the play and actors by degrading them, so he can build them back up, making something fresh and new. In one sense, he succeeds, as Anastasia Hille seemed preternaturally youthful, skipping around like a little girl, as she emerged from the mudpit, and Leo Bill seemed genuinely humbled by crawling around on all fours like a dog, seeking hugs from his fellow actors. Indeed, the sploshing fetish is known to trigger psychic liberation from repressions implanted by childhood cleanliness-obsessive parents, and whether it is food or mud, Hill-Gibbins always seems to seek psychic exorcism through sploshing. But the effect on myself was less revelatory. I felt I had been invited to a tawdry dogging, sitting there fulled clothed, peeping at people at their most vulnerable, sploshing and crawling in mud, as if peeping through the window of a car in the dead of night. Luckily, not all of Shakespeare's comedy in this play relies on subverting highfalutin notions. At the end of the play, Shakespeare has already achieved this subversion, so he has the rude mechanicals indulge in an outright celebration of baseness, stupidity and crudeness. Crudeness is something in Hill-Gibbin's wheelhouse, and the rude mechanicals are genuinely funny. I laughed at Leo Bill's Bottom, and even more so at Aaron Heffernan's Flute, who unselfconsciously appeared as the most stupid man alive, playing Thisbe. But if stupidity and filth are the destination, it is a shame that Hill-Gibbins started in much the same place. He gave himself nowhere to go, pointlessly gutting the comedy over the course of the first three quarters of the play. Unfunny comedy is something I can't stand. 2 stars (for an attempt at something original, despite it's dismal failure). PS: This flop Midsummer makes me mourn anew the banishing of Emma Rice from the Globe. Her Midsummer was one of the funniest I've seen, as she used music and art and dancing and interactivity and roleplay and sheer joy to build a towering conception of love, which degenerated into the most playful and childish broad comedy I have ever witnessed. Bon voyage, Emma!  |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 19, 2017 8:42:28 GMT
Well. I wouldn't like to be the person who has to clean the costumes for this every night. It was like Glastonbury without Dolly Parton but with slightly better toilets.
Like Steve, I preferred the Emma Rice version but there were some positives: Jemima Rooper, Leo Bill and Aaron Heffernan were all very entertaining and I was impressed by Oliver Alvin-Wilson's falling down technique.
But when did Anastasia Hille morph into Vanessa Redgrave?
Crowd seemed to love it though. A few standers. The show offs.
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Post by Jan on Mar 19, 2017 10:06:53 GMT
Well. I wouldn't like to be the person who has to clean the costumes for this every night. It was like Glastonbury without Dolly Parton but with slightly better toilets. Like Steve, I preferred the Emma Rice version but there were some positives: Jemima Rooper, Leo Bill and Aaron Heffernan were all very entertaining and I was impressed by Oliver Alvin-Wilson's falling down technique. But when did Anastasia Hille morph into Vanessa Redgrave? Crowd seemed to love it though. A few standers. The show offs. Hille has been the poor man's Redgrave for at least 10 years. It was particularly noticeable (and I pointed it out here) in the NT "Dido Queen of Carthage" in 2009. |
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Post by Latecomer on Mar 19, 2017 11:02:15 GMT
Yes, that falling down technique was frankly brilliant! Me, I thought the mud could have been a bit muddier! |
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Post by peggs on Mar 26, 2017 16:26:14 GMT
Well that was a bit unexpected.
Found the blocking of this extremely frustrating, ok I was in a £10 seat on the curve of the stage but quite often the actors would go right to the front of the set and stand next to each and block each other out from anyone who wasn't directly central and then when they did move off around the set the bloody fairies would come and stand right in front of you so you couldn't see anything.
In-between that it was all a bit odd, I quite liked the ending interpretation, I tend to question those merry coupling ups at the end of plays so post drug induced nightmares seemed fair enough and rather thought well serves you right as Bottom and Titania/Hippolyta re-connected. Was impressed with whoever made the mud, not entirely sure I liked the conceit but it did look just like recently ploughed earth and not just wet slop that mud often ends up like on stage. The audience generally seemed to be loving it, I don't know how the woman behind me found time for breathe she was laughing so much but I found it rather awkward, uncomfortable even rather than funny. I didn't loathe it and can put it down as a different interpretation with some good acting but have come to the conclusion that perhaps Hill-Gibbons is just not my director when it comes to Shakespeare. That said I think it would have blown my socks off and been a revelation if I'd seen this when studying the play at school, there's nothing remotely dry, soppy or fairytastic about it which it what I remember annoying so much about it then.
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