I just saw a the Gutherie’s newest production of Midsummer’s and (to get it out of the way early) I found it entertaining and well acted… however…
I understand that the whole play is a dream and that a fairy world can really get a set designer’s creative juices flowin’ but A GIANT MEATBALL? There was some argument among those I witnessed the production with that Titania’s automated-pacman-head-resembling dwelling was supposed to be a rock, albeit a perfectly spherical rock that with a rough (meaty) texture but I was not persuaded–it was a meatball.
Non-traditional settings are not uncommon in Shakespeare and I got over the meatball, I even found it entertaining. The singing however, was unforgivable. I have a rule of thumb with Shakespeare: One can cut or even add things to his plays if one desires but in the case of adding one must be replacing something else, as Shakespeare is not brief and one is not as good of a playwright as he was, the play get waaaay to long and boring. The songs were essentially Bill’s words repeated a few times to varying styles of music–and all were poorly done. There was one song that was obviously a 50s doo-wop parody and it was funny. I don’t think the rest were supposed to be parodies because the audience wasn’t laughing (although if someone would have started I’m sure others would have joined in (except for when Puck sang so terribly out of key that everyone just felt bad for him)). The worst of the music were the attempts (yes, more than once) at a hard rock/rap debacles sung by Oberon, they served to extend his monologues is such a way that everything he said/screamed was completely incomprehensible. He should have just done more of the spinning-rope-hanging-circue-du-soleil thing he’d obviously been practicing a whole lot.
There were a lot of BFA students acting in the show and I got the feeling that Joe Dowling had gotten in the habit of saying “YES!” to anything they suggested. This was really a problem with the mechanicals (which were very funny–but also very, very strange) from a random bit with a stuffed dog getting stepped on to a willingness to take the crossdressing humor to a racist extreme by having the adorable asian guy play Thisby and dressing him in both a school-girl out fit and a kimono.
I rarely don’t enjoy Shakespeare and this was no exception, so I encourage anyone to check it out but prepare for some strangeness. And seriously: What the Fuck?
I enabled 