National Theatre - a 3rd look at Midsummer Night's Dream

Titania, Queen of the Fairies
also
Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazon

National Theatre continues to broadcast performances for us.  

Such a privilege. 

This week I am going to try to find a finer balance between watching and learning – though much of the learning is also watching, since there is so much delivered on the web about this play.  

First I was off to find some website that gives the 10 or 20 most famous quotes in the play.  That is always such a good place for me to start. I did find 10 famous sayings, read them, and now want to print them off and memorize some of them, though not the line, "What fools we mortals be."  

I already have personal experience.

Lurene asked me if I have had a chance to see this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  I have seen it.  

Once at the Cineplex.

Twice already at home, and I am hoping for a few more viewings.  

This isn’t my most popular Shakespeare play, but it is the one most performed.  I think everything about the play is complicated:  the characters, the setting, the story line, the fantasy, the fact.

After my third viewing, which happened last night, I still hadn’t had enough and so stopped casting the play and went to my computer, where I can also get the subtitles.  They weren’t asking to my TV.   Now that I think of it, probably too late, I just needed to ask the hand controller to let there be subtitles. 

I am beginning to pick apart pieces of the play that interest me.  On the first viewings there is so much going on, I just have to stay with the forward motion of the play and resist stopping the flow to ask questions of google.  Why this?  Why that?  I ask those questions day and night, including when I am watching a play like this.

...the image captures humanity wrapped in nature ...

Why Titania’s dress?  

I noticed her carrying it over her arm in previous viewings.  

This time I took a good look at the dress while the conversation was going on:  a long train (of verdure), the act of picking it up and carrying it along (taking care of the environment), the train swinging from the sling she sit in, looking down at the action of the night (as is the right of the Fairy Queen).  

The extensive beading on the bodice is beautiful on the close shots where we really get to see it.  

There is braid hanging down, and I was wondering if those are stems or trailing vines.  

I loved the nakedness of Queen Titania’s (Gwendolyn Christie) arms, fully outstretch and our view is as though we are underneath, on the stage floor, looking up at her, even when she stands down from her hammock in the heavens.

David Morst as Puck
Gwendoline Christie as Titania, the Queen of the Fairies
Here you can see the length of the train the costumers have her carry.

I love these secondary and tertiary viewings since there is so much to see, so many events.  I want to keep my eye just on Puck, his eyes squinting, his quirky movements, the tattoos on his arm (are those dog footprints?), all of the colour on his arms, shirt and tights, his sass to the crowd, his obeisance to the Queen, his tantrum to her – I need to study all of that.

If I were talking to children about to watch the show I would want to point out all of the possible settings:  Athens, a night forest, the dream world of flying fairies, contagious fog, moonlight revels, and we are the roving audience moving in and out from the stage, both those physically present at the show ( standing in as audience for us in the performance), and the roving of the camera to bring to our eye, what they cannot see.

More later.

Arta