A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM - REVISITED
ROCKET @ DEMARCO ROXY ART HOUSE (VENUE 115)
MUNICH Shakespeare Company's pop-opera Dream might sound unpromising but it starts challenging our expectations from the moment a wily, androgynous Puck (director Johannes Ponader) opens the theatre door and ushers us in. It's stylish, well acted and immensely respectful of Shakespeare's ideas. Christian Cieslak's musical score sits somewhere between modern opera and West End musical, as do his singers. There are some tenderly beautiful tunes, and very effective musical mood changes, from joyful romp to sinister confusion. Though the diction could have been clearer, the text contains a lotl of Shakespeare's original, and considering this is a German company performing in English, that is no small achievement.
Certainly, the nine performers convey the spirit of the Dream more effectively than it is often done in British theatre. Not only was it strong where you would expect a musical to be strong - the love scenes, the celebrations, it was also effective in the trickier areas: the rollercoaster of emotions as the lovers are confused and enchanted, the plotting of Oberon, the bumbling Mechanicals.
Out of several wonderful performances, it is worth singling out Ponader, who unobtrusively steers the show, and Magdalena Zahn as Helena, whose perfect mastery of unrequited love, confusion, then joyful disbelief is immensely moving. Ursula Beutler's versatile costumes aid the scene shifting between the Athenians and the rather darker world of the fairies. If this show has a weakness, it is in the final act when the Mechanicals' play (performed in German, a neat twist) is too long and too farcical, and there are several different finales. But that is a small complaint about a show which achieved something which sounds impossible: it made A Midsummer Night's Dream feel both authentically Shakespearean and surprisingly modern.
