A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It), after William Shakespeare
Directed by Dmitry Krymov
St James Theatre till March 2
Pick up the phone right now and book a seat, if there are any left.
This superb Russian production takes Shakespeare’s most popular comedy and leaps into an anarchic, fantastical comedy about those quintessential tragic lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe.
On entering the theatre we see on stage a large chandelier that made me think we had booked for The Phantom of the Opera. But then the performance starts with the arrival of the Forest of Arden which, once on stage, immediately disappears and is never seen or mentioned again.
I don’t remember any lines for The Dream being spoken, though there are a few lines from a sonnet and Shakespeare himself appears. However, The Mechanicals’ presentation of “The Lamentable Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe” goes ahead, performed to a stuffed- shirt audience who occupy the boxes of the St James and use their mobile phones and occasionally interrupt the performance to make hilarious and totally irrelevant comments.
While it pokes holes at the pretentiousness of theatre – the Mechanicals are deep into the thematic and poetic levels of meaning in the play (don’t worry, there are some funny sur-titles) – it also plays up the obvious absurdities of theatre.
Yet it uses all the tricks of theatre – acrobatic feats, slapstick, song and dance, sight gags and so on – and then turns the table on us by using more tricks to create an emotional current that stills the audience to pin-drop silence.
A gentle change of lighting, a projection of a hazy moon on the backdrop, slow-moving actors, atmospheric music and the glorious voice of two singers evoke a mood of sadness at the death and dismantling of a 3-metre tall puppet, manipulated by four or five puppeteers.
This magical Dream is “theatre theatrical” at its very best. It received a huge ovation. However, the star of the show is a Jack Russell who deserved his own curtain call after his defence of the audience in the face of the lion.
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