Shakespeare with puppets? Of course it's been done before, but not with some of the same team behind the National Theatre's mega-hit, War Horse. But, although puppets of many sizes and shapes figure in a big way, courtesy of South Africa's endlessly inventive Handspring company, it's a very different beast from that international hit.
- A Midsummer Night's Dream
- Bristol Old Vic
- Starts 7 March
- Until 4 May
- Box office:
- Venue website
There may be nothing to match the magnificence of War Horse's four-legged star Joey, but there is a tremendous Puck – played simultaneously by three actors – who appears as a junk puppet dog assembled from assorted tools. Oberon looms over the action as a giant mask and hand, while the lovers carry around puppet versions of themselves like substitute teddy bears. The strangeness is heightened by the Dave Price score and Christoper Shutt's sound design of drips, scratchings and mystic rustlings.
At its best, the show reminds you not just of the magical stirrings and transformations that take place in a wood outside Athens, but of the alchemy of theatre itself. It's always quite clear we are in a theatre, and the more Tom Morris's production shamelessly reveals how everything is done, the more magical and mysterious it becomes.
Nonetheless, this still feels very much like a work in progress, fizzing with ideas but so over-busy you can't always see the wood for the trees. The constantly moving forest – conjured by actors standing behind planks of wood – is distracting, as if Birnam Wood is constantly shuffling towards Dunsinane.
Taking Bottom's name quite literally in his transformation is rudely funny at first, but it's a bit of a bum deal for the poor actor playing him. It robs the aspirational Bottom of the absurd dignity that in the best productions not only makes him a figure of fun, but a painful and touching character, too.
The setting – possibly some future world deeply connected to the ancient past – needs more clarification, and I couldn't work out why the lovers sometimes have puppet versions of themselves (a bit like the daemons in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials) and sometimes don't. But the double vision that ensues when both actor and puppet are simultaneously visible can be hugely rewarding. When David Ricardo-Pearce's Theseus points a finger at the tiny puppet Hermia, it magnifies the sense of her powerlessness in the face of Athenian law.
There is plenty else to cheer, too, particularly in the second half when the comedy of Hermia and Helena's rivalry is neatly charted. The Pyramus and Thisbe play, so often a bit of a bore, is a hoot, too, and I loved Snout's top-heavy, endlessly toppling wall.
It sometimes feels as if the actors are concentrating so hard on their puppet selves that the acting is compromised, although the initial awkwardness in handling the puppets is mostly overcome. Naomi Cranston is hugely engaging as the young lover Helena.
It's by no means a triumph, but this sapling revival may yet grow into something sturdier.
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