Bristol Old Vic and Handspring Puppet (the South African company that came to fame with War Horse) have teamed up to give a grungily extravagant quality to Shakespeare’s dreamlike A Midsummer Night's Dream.
The grunginess stems from the ragtag costumes (tattered jeans, oddly matched gowns) and the brown-wood set overhung with an autumnal drape. The extravagance is provided by Handspring’s offbeat but imaginative puppets (a wicker basket becomes a dog, Oberon and Titania become ten-foot-tall, stiffly- moving sculptures by play’s end).
Physicality trumps spirit in this production, but fortunately not in a heavy, humorless way. The forest may not be glamorous and enchanting but it’s packed with raffish characters who are skilled at bawdily physical comedy.
The lead clown in all this craziness is Bottom (Miltos Yerolemou in a tour de force performance), whose bare rear-end is featured and flaunted throughout. Director Tom Morris has obviously been given a free and generous hand here -– the budget for a show like this must have matched musical-comedy proportions. But he (and the Handspring puppeteers) have put the money to good use: the production is constantly inventive, packed with surprising touches, acrobatic virtuosity, moments of touching beauty and intimacy. And the 12-person cast, many of whom play multiple characters, is outstanding, able to capture the splendor of Shakespeare’s poetry while cavorting around much of the time like buffoons. Especially funny are the “mechanicals,” the theatrical troupe desperately trying to entertain at the royal wedding.
This is a decidedly post-modern reworking of A Midsummer Night's Dream and a gimmicky one at that, but does not Shakespeare say, “All this derision shall seem a dream and fruitless vision?”
