A Midsummer Night's Dream

After it's been through hundreds of different settings and thousands of different interpretations, it's hard for directors to come up with original concepts for William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream". As a result, we either get productions with highly original concepts that are terribly distasteful or we get a rather conventional interpretation that leaves us bored.

Adrian Noble has tried to transfer this masterpiece from the stage to the screen, and I'm afraid that he doesn't do a particularly good job. The concepts are original and quite intriguing, but the movie itself lacks the dynamism that this play has when performed on stage. The concept of adding The Boy is in my mind great, especially for the movie. Otherwise, I find the settings bland and monotonous.

The Royal Shakespeare Company does an excellent job in acting (of course they do - it's the RSC!) and I would love to see this performed on stage. As for the movie . . . not incredibly satisfying.

This film makes the title literal by adding a Little Nemo character dreaming it all. There are a couple of allusions to Alice in Wonderland, as well. It's a cute idea and leads us to see the characters as if through the boy's eyes but he comes to get in the way after a bit. Many of the actors are double cast so that we're led to see one story in the light of another. The film is playful and inventive in its magical use of prosaic settings and objects. The mood sometimes reminded me of "Dr. Who". There's hardly a scene without a visual surprise. The fairies are rather sinister and erotic; some of the stage business is unusually bawdy--too much so to fit with the conceit of the child's dreaming it all. Bottom and the rustics are funnier than usual, but overall this isn't a primarily comic "Dream". But it is an imaginative and poetic one.

This film is based on a wonderful stage production that was staged by the RSC in 1994. On stage it was superb, and I think of it as one of the best times I've ever had in the theatre.

The film, however, is a complete mess. All the effects that were so magical in the theatre - the forest of lightbulbs, the flying umbrellas, the mysterious doors - look ridiculous when they're turned into bad computer graphics. And although some of the performances are good - especially Alex Jennings and Des Barritt - the pacing of the film seems poor. In particular, the mechanicals scenes are stilted and unfunny - and 'Pyramus and Thisbe' is mangled with poorly-timed slapstick and glooping sentimentality. And most annoyingly of all, Noble introduces a Macauley Culkin lookalike, who runs around being wide-eyed and imaginitive, infusing the film with unnecesary Hollywood schmaltz.

I regard this film as a brave, but poorly-executed attempt at translating faithfully a stage production to film. It doesn't really work, but at least Noble's vision is more imaginitive than the other films of the 'Dream'. And bad though the film is, it's still better than the ghastly Michelle Pfeiffer / Kevin Kline version, which should be avoided like the plague.

I just love this film. I didn't see the stage version, but this is an extremely clever adaptation of the play: a nice parallel construction where the human court is pointed up by using the same actors as the fairy court, and Bottom's friends reappearing as his fairy attendants. Desmond Barrit is brilliantly characterised, and the Mechanicals very creatively presented as English working-class (for instance, Bottom on a motor-bike combination). And we're left with no doubts that he does have sex with Titania, and donkey's ears are not all he gets from the transformation! I think it's one of the hallmarks of good Shakespearian productions that it manages to make the humour genuinely funny, and the play-within-the-play combines slapstick with genuine pathos. Ultimately, it was a very moving production, whose end (despite my being fairly hard-bitten) brought tears to my eyes with its deep nostalgia and Englishness. You are sorry to leave the world of these characters.

I would have liked to have seen this production on the stage without the introduction of a boy whose ambiguous presence is supposed to give the production its "dream-"like quality. I'm afraid, as the other reviewers here have noted, a well-intended and, for the most part, well acted version of one of the Bard's best known and most loved romps, alas, fall flat. The RSC is great but I found the presentation of Alex Jennings in the double role of Theseus and Oberon to be unconvincing. His facial expressions reminded me of one who's stepped out of the loo remarking about the lack of potty-paper. Lindsay Duncan, is lovely and fun in her double role as is the feckless Bottom given in fun by Desmond Barrit. Finbar Lynch's Puck has a darkness not often seen in other presentations but it works. My only quibble besides Mr. Jennings perpetual sneer and the wandering (as another reviewer here noted, a Macaulay Culkin look-alike) kid, is the flatness of the effects-- which I'm sure, worked wonderfully on the stage. Cross-overs into other media can be tough. All in all, an earnest albeit not wholly satisfying effort as earlier versions or the one two years later.