Reviews 2001
Reviews 2001
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by William Shakespeare, directed by Kate Lynch
Theatre Passe Muraille, Toronto
November 1-18, 2001
“Shakespeare Among the Amazons”
Since Theatre Passe Muraille rarely ventures into the classics, one might its production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” to be unconventional. It is the first all-female “Dream” in Toronto theatre history and the fulfillment of director Kate Lynch’s own four-year-long dream. This may be new to Toronto but women have played men’s roles in this play elsewhere. Earlier this year at the Albery in London’s West End, Matthew Francis contrived a framework for this play so that women, including comedian Dawn French, would have the chance to play the Mechanicals. “The Independent” commented that the framework was “a benign way of giving us Dawn French's Bottom without making an ass of the play”. The same cannot be said of the framework Lynch has fashioned. It provides for an all-female cast, but treats the play as only so much material to spoof and mock.
Lynch’s framework places the action on a beach where Amazons have just landed after a battle. After a bit of impromptu soccer with a severed head, Diane Flacks as their leader asks “How shall we beguile The lazy time, if not with some delight?” The line and the plays recommended are the same as those that Theseus asks for just before the performance of the Mechanicals’ play in Act 5 of “Dream”. Theseus’ request leads the Amazons to act “Dream” from Act 1 onwards through the request again to the end. After Puck’s epilogue, a guard sounds the conch calling the women to leave their revelry and return to battle. The play thus appears as a short diversion from the Amazons’ ultimately doomed battle against the Athenians.
Lynch has extrapolated this frame from Shakespeare’s play itself which begins with the Greek hero Theseus’ marriage to Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, whom he just conquered. Yet why, one wonders, should Amazons have in their repertory a play celebrating their own defeat at the hands of their worst enemy? There is no good answer to this unless we are to believe that the Amazons have bothered to con an entire play for the sole purpose of mocking its inherent assumptions about patriarchy, male superiority and typical female behaviour. Illogical as the set-up is, this is the route the production takes. The second aspect of this frame is that what we see is the Amazons’ own amateur production. Given that the whole text of Shakespeare’s play follows lines that usually preface the Mechanicals’ play, it seems that Lynch wants us to view the entirety of Shakespeare’s “Dream” as equivalent to that play, i.e. as a poorly written, poorly acted farce. We are confronted with the paradoxical attitude of a director who aims to be provocative by being deliberately superficial. Her approach is thus not much different from Rick Miller’s in his “MacHomer” where the Simpsons do “Macbeth”.
Shakespeare’s plays were, of course, first performed by all-male companies, so I was quite eager to see what nuances an all-female cast would bring out. When, as here, an entire play is held up to ridicule, subtlety and nuance are replaced by parody and slapstick. Where Lynch’s approach works best in the scenes involving the four lovers since Shakespeare himself is parodying the excesses of young love. In too many other productions the four are indistinguishable, but here Lynch differentiates all four and the best-earned laughs of the evening come from the actors’ detailed portrayal of the barely controllable desires and rivalries of newly-smitten teenagers. In the scenes involving the Fairies, however, Lynch’s approach fails utterly since parody undermines the magic. Only Titania’s main speeches are delivered straight. Otherwise, Puck, incomprehensibly, is made to seem like a modern streetwise kid and Oberon, like all the males, as a chauvinist after whatever the females possess. Lynch does try to make it seem that Oberon is unhappy about duping his wife into falling in love with an ass, so much so we wonder why he should do it at all. The Mechanicals all appear as caricatures of males much giving to spitting and belching. Their “Pyramus and Thisbe” is hilarious but the direction is not much different from some of the more outlandish versions I’ve seen at Stratford.
Lynch has asked the actors for caricatures not characters. Their primary freedom within such confines is to play at least two main roles beyond those in the frame. At first seeing an all-female cast so strongly exaggerate the differences between male (awkward louts) and female (feeble ninnies) is delightful. But as the play wears on the acting devolves into camp. Within these parameters all seven are excellent. Kristen Thomson is truly hilarious both as Hermia and Bottom. It a treat to see her transform herself in just a turn from a preening, tiptoeing airhead to a gruff know-it-all with the demeanour of Charles Laughton. Catherine Fitch is funny in a much subtler way as the put-upon Helena and the well-meaning Quince.
Diane Flacks makes Theseus patronizing and overconfident and Titania into a kind of goddess of the Amazons. She also plays the meek Starveling which does not work as well, since in Act 5 she compelled have a dialogue with herself. Waneta Storms gives us a subdued Hippolyta, clearly displeased with her forced marriage, and an intense, quirky Oberon. Ruth Madoc-Jones clearly distinguishes between her two old man roles, Egeus and Philostrate, and she would make an excellent Puck if Lynch hadn’t given her a modern day attitude that makes nonsense of the Amazon framework. Karen Robinson is a recalcitrant Demetrius and quite a hoot as Flute playing Thisbe. Camille Stubel captures the youthful awkwardness of her runny-nosed Lysander.
The design is handsome, all sand and earth tones, from Steve Lucas’s beach set against a blue backdrop and reflecting the summer glow of his lighting to Jennifer Triemstra’s costumes. It is part of the camp aspect of the production that we know the women are Amazons mostly because their two-piece outfits remind of 1950s sci-fi movies. Rick Sacks’s fusion-inspired music is highly effective.
Near the beginning of the Mechanicals’ play when Hippolyta starts to mock the actors, Theseus says, “The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them…. If we imagine no worse of them than they of themselves, they may pass for excellent men”. It is typical of Lynch’s approach that she should have Theseus toss off these remarks as jokes rather than as proof of his generosity of spirit. This “Dream” is enjoyable in spite of Lynch’s derisive attitude because of the ability of the seven actors themselves. Their overabundance of talent is the most persuasive argument in the production to widen casting choices for this play in future.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Diane Flacks and Waneta Storms. ©2001 Theatre Passe Muraille.
2001-11-06
A Midsummer Night’s Dream