This is a dream-state, otherworldly imagining of A Midsummer Night’s Dream– funny, playful, but possessing the dark urgency of a particularly bizarre dream that embroils the sleeper and occupies their thoughts even upon waking. This is the much-hyped collaboration between Bristol Old Vic’s artistic director Tom Morris and South African Handspring Puppet Company, whose previous partnership War Horse needs no introduction. Strategically scheduled early in BOV’s second season after a major refurbishment, this is an ambitious project that aims to put the theatre firmly back on the national map of producing houses.
Bold, inventive and experimental, this is not a romantic fairytale of love and gentle confusion in a temperate, fragrant forest, but a hot, sweaty anxiety dream that jumps from one chaotic landscape to another. Characters morph into one another, and themes echo and multiply in a boundary-less imagined world full of eerie noises and illogical occurrences. It makes complete sense to treat A Midsummer Night’s Dream in this way, and yet it feels new, rare and a little dangerous. It is cynical, flippant and brusque.
A dizzying array of puppetry styles are at the core of the show’s abstraction, not least because conventions attached to each style are invariably broken. The lovers are selfish, immature, horny teenagers, full of a flouncy, shallow energy that supports their passionate pursuit of one another one minute, and an ardent switching of loyalties the next. Each actor has a beautiful little poseable puppet likeness of themselves – the story is told through the doll-like puppets but at particularly intense times the action breaks out and returns to the actors. Sometimes this is powerful, sometimes confusing. Oberon and Titania are giant floating, ghostly Grecian heads operated by a strong Hippolyta and a playful Theseus. Puck is a sinister whisper, a confluence of inanimate objects that imitate Epstein’s Rock Drill one minute, and a wagging Scottie dog or oozing snail the next. He is there and not-there – he takes centre stage, operated by three actors, with their three voices and six hands, but disappears in an instant, back into the chorus of floating planks that represent fairies, forest and confusion. Bottom – well… Titania and Bottom’s grotesque affair is a burlesque bacchanal that is difficult to shake from the memory, even if I’d rather forget about it. Hilarious, hysterical, rude and nightmarish, again the decisions made in the staging make complete sense in terms of the play and yet you rarely see it pushed this far.
A chaos of styles and ideas contribute to this telling of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a giant theatrical experiment. It’s fascinating, affecting and immersive. It is nothing like War Horse and will not charm a family audience looking for something to do in the Easter Holidays, but it will certainly give them lots to think about.