Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
Shouldn't the Barn be a platform for new writing - why would you choose to revive an age-old classic like A Midsummer Night's Dream?
The Barn absolutely should be a platform for new writing, and it would be wrong not to have that, but it would also be entirely wrong to have solely that. The great thing about Shakespeare is that it is so open to interpretation. It’s so old that setting it in its contemporary period now has no relevance. You can make it relevant to anything you want so it ends up having almost as much creative control as student writing would have. And people enjoy seeing plays they have seen before. We have an easy sell, because it's A Midsummer Night's Dream - possibly his most famous comedy.
As you say, Midsummer is a very well-known play, so what is it about your production that is different?
There will definitely have been a production a lot like this, I do not doubt, simply because it is one of Shakespeare's most popular plays. I mean, I'm sitting here sewing a puppet of a changeling boy, and it is by no means the first production to use puppets. We're dressing 1930s/1940s, and that has of course been done before. When people ask you how you're doing it, they tend to mean, what are the costumes like? When really, what is more important is how you deal with the text.
You're directing this from the stance of an English student. Do you think it's possible for someone to direct Shakespeare without analysing the text? Do you look at things like metre and metaphors?
I think you definitely can direct Shakespeare without being an English student. The play would be no worse, but different. I do occasionally do very annoying English-y things where I ask the actors to do a particular thing because it ties in with something subtextual that occurs later on.
Have you taken inspiration from other productions you've seen?
I watched four films from across the 20th century. I watched a 1909 silent version, which had Oberon as a woman called Penelope...
Pardon?
Instead of Oberon, they have a female fairy called Penelope - exactly the same character - and it's bizarre; they still argue over the changeling boy, he still enacts sexual revenge by getting her in bed with a donkey, they still go off cradling each other at the end. It's this bizarre sort of lesbian relationship in 1909 in A Midsummer Night's Dream! And that was probably the best one out of the four I saw. I saw another which was like homosexual performance art.
Homosexual performance art?
Well, at least it's very homoerotic; Oberon and Titania are both men in drag, and they're dressed like courtiers from Versailles. But in terms of a good production that I saw, the 2005 Gregory Doran RSC production of it was one that used a puppet changeling child, and it was the most adorable thing I have ever seen on stage. When Oberon and Titania have the child at the end, I nearly melted.
With Shakespeare plays at the moment, there seems to be a vogue for doing plays that aren't that well-known. Weren't you reluctant to do AMND because it is possibly over-done?
Yes, people are now putting on plays like Timon of Athens and Troilus and Cressida. I'm very comfortable with AMND - I've seen it countless times, I've studied it, so it seemed like a good choice.
Is it your favourite Shakespeare play?
One of them. It doesn't have my favourite characters in it.
Who is your favourite Shakespearean character?
Iago. Midsummer is beautiful and Midsummer is fun, but it doesn’t have the best characters in it. Iago is absolutely fascinating.
I leave Rosie cradling the puppet with more maternal affection than is entirely necessary for an inanimate doll and wish them luck. The Drama Barn hasn't seen a Shakespeare put on between its walls for a long time, and I, for one, am interested to see the black box studio transformed into the rainy forests of Athens. A Midsummer Night's Dream is showing Friday, Saturday and Sunday of Week 6. It starts at 7.30pm. Tickets can be bought on the door or at Vanbrugh stalls on Friday from 12-2pm.
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