A Midsummer Night's Dream (Series 4 Episode 3)

First Transmitted 13th December 1981

Helen Mirren dreams of a donkey headed Brian Glover

Cast: Helen Mirren (Titania), Peter McEnery (Oberon), Brian Glover (Bottom), Phil Daniels (Puck), Robert Lindsay (Lysander), Pippa Guard (Hermia), Nicky Henson (Demetrius), Cherith Mellor (Helena), Nigel Davenport (Theseus), Estelle Kohler (Hippolyta), Geoffrey Palmer (Peter Quince), Don Estelle (Robin Starveling), Geoffrey Lumden (Egeus), Hugh Quashie (Philostrate)Director: Elijah Moshinsky

Well the series has certainly come a long way since we last saw Helen Mirren in one of these productions. Back then was of course As You Like It, one of the worst films ever made of a Shakespeare play, totally devoid of imagination, interpretation or film-making finesse. That’s certainly not the case in this production of Shakespeare’s lost classic, A Midsummer Night’s Nightmare.

Or at least that feels like what you’re watching. I certainly had trouble reconciling this production with any other version of the play I’d seen or been in. Moshinsky has already shown in this series that he has a strong visual sense and brings a fresh imagination to productions. Both come to the fore here, where Athens is a staid, strait-laced place sharply contrasted with the dark skies, brooding clouds and manic energy of the fairies in the forest. Far from a jaunt in the wood, here the lovers’ exploits seem more like a stroll through the outer reaches of Hell, with Puck as a punkish ringmaster and Oberon as a Heathcliffian bully.

In many ways, this dark, brooding take on a play usually performed as a straightforward crowd-pleasing comedy is a success. It’s certainly not what most people expect when they come to Dream – there can surely never have been a production of this play where there was less focus on comedy and laughs. At times, this has unfortunate consequences (bless ‘em, even the Mechanicals aren’t particularly amusing – more on them later) but elsewhere it works as a bold and refreshing new take on a familiar story, and an antidote to the saccharine interpretations many productions follow. Moshinsky’s main concept is to draw a very sharp division between the court of Athens and the chaos in the woods: one vibrant and alive, the other staid and stuffy.

Throughout the first scenes of the play, Athens is presented as a formal and structured society, in which talk and emotions are restrained and characters seem strapped into their formal roles. This all stems from the top, with Nigel Davenport’s Theseus a polite, authoritative and controlled ruler, like an army colonel ready to shoot anyone found guilty of shouting in the mess. Moshinsky’s only major hint of division is the formal division between him and Estelle Kohler’s prowling Hippolyta, Moshinsky framing their first scene with both on the opposite sides of the frame.

The lovers are similarly restrained, keeping their emotions in sharp check while in Athens. Lysander and Demetrius communicate their rivalry only with glances (or lack of them) and even in the heights of passion, Lysander only brings himself to hold Hermia’s hand. Even in the forest, before enchantment, their manners remain resolutely proper and upper-class. Helena gets the closest to breaking the ‘rules’ with some arch comments and complaints. The downside of this approach is that their scenes are (whisper it) slightly boring.

In contrast, the fairies are a cocktail of frenetic movement, heightened emotions and youthful exuberance (literally so in many cases, as children take on most of the roles), led by two exceptional, dynamic performances from Helen Mirren (laying her Rosalind well and truly to rest) and Peter McEnery (an absolute revelation). Oberon and Titania themselves are casual, sensual characters, comfortable with physicality and willing to let their emotions play out very publically – very different to the Athenian lovers.

Moshinsky lets his painterly eye run riot with the fairyworld, giving it the look of a combination of Rubens and the Dutch masters. Rembrandt is a particularly strong influence, with a series of remarkably strong images of Titania in bed particularly reminiscent of the master. The purple sky and dark greenery of the forest add contrast to the more restained and formal compositions of Athens. Oberon’s entrance – a wild haired, open-shirted figure on a horse – gives him the appearance of a classic romantic figure. Mirren herself has the looks and dressing of a classical heroine in flowing white. Their otherworldliness is further heightened by the echo-effect added to a number of their lines in A2 S1. Moshinsky uses a series of fast-edits and intelligent lighting tricks to give a sense of unceasing action to the fairy world.

Mirren’s Titania is simply superb, one of the best performances of the part I have ever seen. She gives Titania a depth that makes her the relatable half of this relationship. Mirren’s performance of Titania’s famous speech in A2 S1 is a masterful reading, conveying anger, frustration and a hint of sadness and always compelling. Compared to the human characters, she is full of human emotions and demonstrates far more empathy. She also manages to avoid making Titania seem like either a fool or a victim of a cruel joke. It’s a very skilled and ‘real’ performance by a wonderfully talented actress.

McEnery’s Oberon is a logical partner to this: a passionate man with anger just below the surface, dangerously uncertain as to whether he will laugh or kill the person he is talking to. McEnery’s clipped vocal style is perfect for this imperious interpretation that positions the character as very much not of this world. With Puck he is in turns tender and amused, then angry and violent (at one point holding his head underwater as punishment).  He is the perfect figurehead for the chaos the other fairies gleefully embrace and propagate throughout the play, each of them bringing a frame-skirting energy to their every move.

Phil Daniels adds an edge of menace to the earthy Puck, taking a wild and whooping delight in his mayhem, like one of the lost boys. His athleticism has been mentioned above, and is shown particularly well in his gulling of the lovers, as he appears suddenly in a series of unusual positions and angles in relation to the four Athenians, in some cases taking on an almost demonic physical control of their bodies. At other times he approaches them – especially Hermia – with a youthful curiosity. By the end of the play, as the fairies frolic in Theseus’ palace, he becomes a ring-leader, brushing aside table placements and driving on the other fairies to greater shows of disruption.

So in this fairy-dominated production how do the human characters fare? Not well. The lovers are very dull. Moshinsky’s decision to only allow them to show any real life when under the fairy spells works for the concept, but makes the bulk of their action tedious to watch. The decision to have the lovers speak many of the lines in A4 S1 at the same time does create a fine impression of the turmoil in their relationships at this point, but also (considering the static way most of the scene is shot) suggests Moshinsky was either still aiming to draw a contrast between human and fairy or that he wanted to get the scene over and done with.

Either way, the lovers remain hard to like. Lindsay does his best, but Pippa Guard is as forgettable here as she was in The Tempest, Nicky Henson gives gruffness but little else as Demetrius and the decision to make Helena as plain, spinsterish and unattractive as Cherith Meller is here is a ridiculous over-intepretation of some of the lines in the play (and ignores the clear reference that she is considered as attractive as Hermia). Saddled with a restrained acting style, they are an almost complete failure here, dull as ditchwater, their scenes ripe for fast forwarding. Moshinsky’s far more static shooting style for the lovers actually works well for watching in fast-forward to be honest – admire the composition for A1 S1, but read the lines in advance so you know what they’re saying. You’re not missing masses doing so believe me.

The mechanicals fare little better. With the decision to focus the energy on the fairies and to keep the human characters as restrained and subdued as possible, they are filmed as statically as the lovers and often deliver as restrained a performance style. They are, quite frankly, not funny at all. There is no energy or humour to the final performance of their play or the rehearsals. Their characters remain largely ill-defined. Geoffrey Palmer’s Quince is a good example of the problem here: his performance was (allegedly) a parody of the Director-General of the BBC at the time – but 20 years later the joke is completely lost and the performance falls totally flat.

Brian Glover’s Bottom is part of the problem. As well as not being funny enough, I think it is an example of miscasting – Glover’s working class credentials as an actor are too well drawn, he lacks the classical background the part needs in order for the parody of classical acting and thespian self-importance to really work. For me, he also doesn’t convey enough of the sense of wonder Bottom must surely feel at the fairy world – his reflections on it after its disappearance are underplayed and restrained. It’s a performance that never really comes to life as a leading figure in the play, a little too quiet and lacking in the sense of a frustrated artist finally being allowed to live his dreams. The scenes with Titania and Bottom feel like missed opportunities, and Bottom himself feels like far less of a dominant character in the play than he usually does.

These weaknesses are by and large self-inflicted wounds, necessary side effects of the creative decisions taken by Moshinky as part of the production. It’s a testament to him that he manages to do something different with this most over-performed of the plays (and one I’ve never really quite warmed to either). The fairy material has rarely been done better, but the more conventional comedy moments have rarely been less engaging than here. Similarly, the human characters are left short-changed by the camera’s focus on making the fairy characters the sole source of dynamism in the production. It makes for an interesting interpretation for old hands, but is highly unlikely to convert new audiences to Shakespeare. Watch the fairy bits but skip past everything else – there is nothing to see here.

Conclusion

Fantastic performances by McEnery and Mirren and some wonderful inventive direction of the fairies, combined with some brilliant painterly touches in the camerawork are the main strengths here. But this is an unfunny production that stalls dramatically as soon as it gets anywhere near the human characters, so wedded to its decision to play them as stolid and constrained that it’s hard for the viewer to develop any real interest in them at all. It’s a unique and imaginative production, but not exactly complete entertainment.

NEXT TIME: It’s that man Michael Hordern again – this time giving us his King Lear.