A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rose Theatre | reviews, news & interviews
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rose Theatre
A Midsummer Night's Dream, Rose Theatre
Judi Dench is a glorious Gloriana in Peter Hall's flat production
![](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/mast_image_landscape/public/mastimages/31d056b7a668d052ce81de69c4a46262.jpg?itok=9knRZWHp)
It’s the pretext that reunites Judi Dench and Peter Hall to collaborate on Shakespeare’s comedy nearly five decades after they first ventured into the Athenian woods together at the RSC. But the conceit of conflating the fairy queen Titania with Gloriana doesn’t come close to lending Hall’s workaday production the necessary sense of enchantment. It’s performed on Elizabeth Bury’s sparse and decidedly mundane monochrome set, with its cardboard cut-out trees and a shiny black floor, which lacks any flavour of the sylvan and, thumped across by heavy-footed, boot-shod actors, is sometimes distractingly noisy. Where’s the magic?
What little there is comes, unsurprisingly, courtesy of Dench. Immediately recognisable as an imperious Elizabeth I in glittering gown, curled red wig and ruff, she first appears among her courtiers bidding them, with a commanding gaze, to play out Shakespeare’s drama around her for her own diversion. Hall’s staging is often dully static; he reinforces the queen’s status by frequently requiring the rest of the cast to kneel.
The central concept of his interpretation is intriguing at the outset; and it works well enough when Titania is declaring her right to an Indian boy, who, to her, is a pretty piece of property and the offspring of a loyal subject, or issuing instructions to her band of rather earthbound fairies. But it makes little sense when Charles Edwards as Oberon tricks her into amorous obsession with the ass-headed Bottom – a humiliation to which it’s difficult to imagine the monarch deigning to stoop.
Still, Dench is bewitching, by turns statesmanlike, flirtatious, magisterial and sensual. Her words of love to Oliver Chris’s Bottom, transformed with wonderfully furry ears, big bright eyes and a pair of shiny fore-hooves, drip eroticism; her speech of nature in revolt over the rift between fairy king and queen rings with contained anger and anguish. But what surrounds her onstage feels like little more than scanty window-dressing for Dench’s performance.
Of the lovers, only Rachael Stirling makes much impression: there’s a convincing note of heart-sickness and self-disgust to her Helena – though she sounded dangerously hoarse on opening night. Julian Wadham and Susan Salmon betray not a hint of passion as Theseus and Hippolyta, and Salmon’s delivery of the verse is disconcertingly stilted. As for the Mechanicals, a Midlands-accented band led by James Laurenson’s muted Quince, their knockabout clowning is painfully protracted and even the assembled Athenians didn’t appear to be enjoying their eventual display of amateur dramatics much.
Fairy dust may sparkle and dance around Dench’s Titania; the rest is rarely other than ordinary.
OVERLEAF: MORE DENCH ON THEARTSDESK
It’s the pretext that reunites Judi Dench and Peter Hall to collaborate on Shakespeare’s comedy nearly five decades after they first ventured into the Athenian woods together at the RSC. But the conceit of conflating the fairy queen Titania with Gloriana doesn’t come close to lending Hall’s workaday production the necessary sense of enchantment. It’s performed on Elizabeth Bury’s sparse and decidedly mundane monochrome set, with its cardboard cut-out trees and a shiny black floor, which lacks any flavour of the sylvan and, thumped across by heavy-footed, boot-shod actors, is sometimes distractingly noisy. Where’s the magic?
What little there is comes, unsurprisingly, courtesy of Dench. Immediately recognisable as an imperious Elizabeth I in glittering gown, curled red wig and ruff, she first appears among her courtiers bidding them, with a commanding gaze, to play out Shakespeare’s drama around her for her own diversion. Hall’s staging is often dully static; he reinforces the queen’s status by frequently requiring the rest of the cast to kneel.
The central concept of his interpretation is intriguing at the outset; and it works well enough when Titania is declaring her right to an Indian boy, who, to her, is a pretty piece of property and the offspring of a loyal subject, or issuing instructions to her band of rather earthbound fairies. But it makes little sense when Charles Edwards as Oberon tricks her into amorous obsession with the ass-headed Bottom – a humiliation to which it’s difficult to imagine the monarch deigning to stoop.
Still, Dench is bewitching, by turns statesmanlike, flirtatious, magisterial and sensual. Her words of love to Oliver Chris’s Bottom, transformed with wonderfully furry ears, big bright eyes and a pair of shiny fore-hooves, drip eroticism; her speech of nature in revolt over the rift between fairy king and queen rings with contained anger and anguish. But what surrounds her onstage feels like little more than scanty window-dressing for Dench’s performance.
Of the lovers, only Rachael Stirling makes much impression: there’s a convincing note of heart-sickness and self-disgust to her Helena – though she sounded dangerously hoarse on opening night. Julian Wadham and Susan Salmon betray not a hint of passion as Theseus and Hippolyta, and Salmon’s delivery of the verse is disconcertingly stilted. As for the Mechanicals, a Midlands-accented band led by James Laurenson’s muted Quince, their knockabout clowning is painfully protracted and even the assembled Athenians didn’t appear to be enjoying their eventual display of amateur dramatics much.
Fairy dust may sparkle and dance around Dench’s Titania; the rest is rarely other than ordinary.
OVERLEAF: MORE DENCH ON THEARTSDESK
Subscribe to theartsdesk.com
Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.
To take a subscription now simply click here.
And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?
more Theatre
![Phenomenal vocals: Mary Bridget Davies as Janis Jopin](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Mary%20Bridget%20Davies%20as%20Janis%20Joplin%20in%20A%20NIGHT%20WITH%20JANIS%20JOPLIN%2C%20credit%20Danny%20Kaan%201.jpg?itok=SAe3HcYn)
![Desperate, farcical, infuriating, ultimately patience-testing: (l-r) Bertrand Lesca and Nasi Voutsas in L'Addition](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/L%27addition%20small.jpg?itok=0I_fgLCR)
![Tosin Cole and Heather Agyepong in Shifters - musical chairs ends in no score draw](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/6%29%20Tosin%20Cole%20%28Dre%29%20Heather%20Agyepong%20%28Des%29%20%28c%29%20Marc%20Brenner%20.jpg?itok=SayQSagA)
![Trunk route: Tom Byrne as Richard Hannay being chased across the misty moors](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%2039%20Steps%20-%20%20Tom%20Byrne%2C%20%C2%A9Mark%20Senior.jpg?itok=XCKIG66o)
![A furious dissection of Jewish mores: (l-r) Dylan Corbett-Bader and Gemma Barnett in REVENGE: After the Levoyah](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Revenge%20After%20the%20Levoyah%20small.jpg?itok=FaMZBRhb)
![Blistering solo performance: Robbie Gordon in Wonder Fools' 'Òran'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Oran%20small.jpg?itok=4Y5OWyCB)
![Réka Jónás, Lily de la Haye and Stuart Pendred in The Fabulist - cardinal sinning](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/3B9A2322-Edit.jpg?itok=uDXzVpKZ)
![Diva, harridan and force of nature: writer and performer Arturo Luíz Soria plays his own mother in 'Ni Mi Madre'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Ni%20mi%20madre%20small.jpg?itok=i_hrsMH1)
![A Waiting for Godot for the climate-crisis era: (l-r) Luke Rollason and Paul Adefaya in Daisy Hall's 'Bellringers'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/Bellringers%20small.jpg?itok=DTWvlAyd)
![No time for words: Nadia Nadarajah, John Hollingworth](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/AC%202%20main%202.png?itok=uZSP1XEP)
![Jane Horrocks and Nicolas Tennant - 'I think that speck on the horizon might be Nigel Farrage'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/The%20Birthday%20Party%20-%20Jane%20Horrocks%20and%20Nicolas%20Tennant%20-%20Foteini%20Christofilopoulou%20%282%29.jpg?itok=QZfSFQbm)
![Odd couple: Humera Syed and Usaamah Ibraheem Hussain in ‘Peanut Butter & Blueberries'](https://theartsdesk.com/sites/default/files/styles/thumbnail/public/mastimages/peanut1.jpg?itok=h_K4m95F)
Add comment