In Perfect Harmony

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Royal Shakespeare Company
The Observer

The lesson of A Midsummer Night’s Dream may be that you never get out of the wood. Certainly that seems to be the upshot of John Barton’s new production at Stratford. When we enter the theatre, mottled shadows, leaf-patterned, cover the back wall of the set. They fade to invisibility during the opening scene in the Athenian court, but once re-established they are a fixture. The final revels—the marriages and the performance of ‘Pyramus and Thisbe’— take place in their shadow; almost it seems by their permission. 

It makes perfect sense; we are explicitly told that the fairies who rule the wood also rule the world, and without their intervention the last act of the play would never happen. They make up its unseen audience; if Mr. Barton has sacrificed some of the surprise of their final celebratory appearance he has made it seem perfectly logical. He has also made it an occasion of genuine joy; the choreographer Gillian Lynne is listed as his co-director, and the lyric accomplishment of this sequence, as much else in the evening, must surely be credited to her. 

It is something at Stratford in 1977 to see greenery that actually looks green; something, too, to find fairies who might have been taken from some sumptuously eclectic collection of children’s picture-books. (There are even children present to play Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth and Mustardseed; with so much tradition about, I almost expected to hear Mendelssohn, but there are limits. Actually, by the Renaissance-Gothic standards that are established here, Mendelssohn would appear a student modern.)

The politics of this fairyland are complicated; Titania has a copious train, but they all seem to be double agents working for Oberon. And though there is plenty of majesty in Marjory Bland's white-goddess performance, she cannot be said to stand much of a chance. OK or not, Oberon rules; you might guess as much from the casting. In a mainly young and untried company the experienced Patrick Stewart stands alone. Generally thought a dour plain actor he has in fact (witness his Moor in Titus Andronicus) a considerable flair for the exotic. This Oberon, ‘come from the farthest step of India,’ bronzed physically and vocally, is night to her day. When he threatens her the lights go down; when she defies him they go up again. 

But though sinister, Mr. Stewart stops short of malevolence; his attitude to Puck (‘I saw but thou could'st not’) is patronising but protective. Leonard Preston is a cheery hobgoblin but capable, in his description of the lost-soul graveyard sprites, of real dread. Mr. Barton, in fact, has thought out his fairy kingdom, even to the details of magic applied without anaesthetic. When Lysander receives the love-juice, he writhes violently; Titania, loving an ass, tried a few enthusiastic ‘heehaws’ of her own and her revulsion when his true nature is revealed is not, for once, passed over.

The lovers run to type; there are not really too many ways of playing them. Marilyn Galsworthy adds to the treasurable list of funny languishing Helenas. Some of the mechanicals, too, are easily recognisable in outline, though transfigured by sheer intensity of performance; so Snug's declaration that he is ‘slow of study’ seems in Brian Coburn’s performance as shattering a stroke of genius as anything in Shakespeare. (It is beautifully capped when Quince absently hands him the massive script intended for Pyramus.)

Richard Griffith’s Bottom, however, is a true original; not a shover, but a man quietly sure of his own talents, though still capable of modest musing when their full extent is revealed. He is gentle and a very good choice for Pyramus; he might also make a good Thisbe. (I would not myself cast him as the Lion.) The first entrance of this fellowship transforms the play, which gets off to a chilly start. By the end, all is in harmony. It is ritual to say of a Stratford production that it will probably improve; this one is pretty good already.