{"id":1472,"date":"2017-03-05T12:15:51","date_gmt":"2017-03-05T12:15:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1472"},"modified":"2017-03-05T12:20:15","modified_gmt":"2017-03-05T12:20:15","slug":"funny-or-die","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2017\/03\/funny-or-die.html","title":{"rendered":"Funny or die"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

What makes a comedy? Perspective. Ask Shakespeare\u2019s Malvolia, Titania, or Andrew Aguecheek if they\u2019re living in a comedy and they\u2019ll gaze at you with tear-stained incredulity. Publicly shamed, sexually humiliated, drugged and tricked into \u2013 oh yes \u2013 public sex with a donkey. Oh, how they laugh.<\/p>\n

Whether we laugh \u2013 or whether we\u2019re encouraged to do so \u2013 depends on the production. Perhaps we should start from the position that Shakespeare\u2019s comedies aren\u2019t necessarily funny now \u2013 so what else might they be? After all, there can be a hilarity in plays by Caryl Churchill or Simon Stephens \u2013 but that\u2019s not the only, or even the main point. A Shakespeare show aiming at funny or die just might die on its arse.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Dagleish and Jemima Rooper in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo: Tristram Kenton<\/p><\/div>\n

That\u2019s why Joe Hill-Gibbins\u2019 A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em><\/a> hits home so forcefully. Feh to fairies and a romcom beneath the stars \u2013 pah even to the dazzlingly smart entertainment that Emma Rice<\/a> created at the Globe last summer. At the Young Vic, the wood near Athens is where dream become nightmare. Johannes Sch\u00fctz designs a muddy paddock and a mirror. The ground is claggy with clods \u2013 impossible to cross without stumbling whether in heels or bearefoot, ready to smear the nicest summer dress with dark beshitten stains.<\/p>\n

There are guffaws here \u2013 confusion and despair, what\u2019s not to laugh? \u2013 but they\u2019re almost incidental. Unlike other dreams, this is less fantasia than a nightmare of identity. So many of these characters define themselves through the desire they feel or attract. Helena, rejected by her beloved, feels she\u2019s been scrubbed out \u2013 Anna Madeley makes her a losing battle between incisive and plaintive. Michael Gould\u2019s Oberon (like the duke in Hill-Gibbins\u2019 Measure for Measure<\/em><\/a>, a damaged manipulator), makes everything right and feels it\u2019s all gone wrong. The lovers may end up in neat Jack-shall-have-Jill pairings, but can\u2019t forget how they got there. The women, especially \u2013 Hermia (Jemima Rooper) has seen her Lysander as coercive (ignoring her protests against runaway sex for rather too long) and violently repudiating; the happy ending traumatises her.<\/p>\n

The revelatory performance was Leo Bill as Bottom. He looks, a bit, like an exaggerated version of the director (auburn locks, big specs, hipster trews), and has a sweetness, an earnestness, blinking with enthusiasm and kindness. His transformation into ass is even more deforming than most \u2013 Sarah Lucas-style distended knobbly stockings at ears and around his crotch and torso. Yet his sweetness is undented \u2013 no wonder Titania (Anastasia Hille) falls for him, no wonder their finger-twirling caress seems like a reproach to Oberon. No wonder, too, that when Bottom meets Hille\u2019s Hippolyta, a memory of their besotted avatars reawakens, shutting Gould out.<\/p>\n

Some productions treat dawn as a blank slate; several reviews have noted that Robert Lepage<\/a> (1992) also set the play in a mudbath \u2013 but his mucky lovers showered upon waking, their underwear gleaming white once more, the night\u2019s terrors sluiced away. No such relief here \u2013 mud sticks, and can\u2019t be scrubbed, claggy as disappointment, a permastain of humiliation.<\/p>\n

Bill, in an interview<\/a>, located the charge of Hill-Gibbins\u2019 Measure for Measure<\/em> in its ending: \u2018it was the first time I’d seen it end really badly, with no jig, just really fucked up.\u2019 Here too, the ending remains unconsoling: relationships have frayed too far for resolution. Less therapeutic dream than recurring nightmare, the production (cut text, two hours) ends with everyone repeating key lines, like wheels spinning in the mud. The voice of Oliver Alvin-Wilson\u2019s derisive Demetrius rises above the gabble, asking over and over, \u2018are you sure that we are awake?\u2019 And that is a frightened place to be.<\/p>\n

Desire and disappointment<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s the wahey bits that slap you with cringe in Simon Godwin\u2019s production of Twelfth Night<\/em><\/a>. Doon Mackichan\u2019s jester \u2013 here, a cabaret artiste in Grayson Perry\u2019s spangly cast-offs \u2013 has witty inflections and a voice for a rueful torch song \u2013 but hard though she works she can\u2019t raise a titter. Godwin\u2019s weakness for gigglesome shtick \u2013 car, teddy bear, naughty nightclub \u2013 rarely pays off.<\/p>\n

Funny business just isn\u2019t funny. Unhappiness and delusion, however, never lose their savour. The production\u2019s genderquake talking point was Tamsin Greig, turning the steward who gets comeuppanced from puritanical killjoy Malvolio into lesbian puritanical killjoy Malvolia. It\u2019s a genius move, but only because Greig is a comic genius who makes everything real. Malvolia\u2019s is a world of tightly-wound desire and terrible disappointment. She\u2019s a grim-lipped Mrs Danvers, stalking Olivia\u2019s household in black culottes and a bob trimmed so precisely you could cut yourself on it. Her long hands slice the air with samurai precision. Her mouth curdles with contempt. Her smile spreads frost before it, but her fingers stretch out, millicreep by millicreep, towards the sleeping Olivia\u2019s hair.<\/p>\n

But she wants so much, this Malvolia \u2013 and it\u2019s hard not to feel for her because don\u2019t we want too much as well? Would we bother with theatre if we weren\u2019t swaddled in unrealistic dreams, wanting to escape them or watch them acted out? She dreams big, Malvolia: social ambition with a side order of hot countess sex. Her discovery of the fake-news love letter that ruins her is crying-funny, because she ushers us into her confidence. She adjusts some wayward topiary \u2013 shocked that we\u2019ve let it pass \u2013 then exults. She doesn\u2019t entirely trust us \u2013 she\u2019s bitterly disappointed when we snigger at a double entendre \u2013 but she has to confide in someone, and we\u2019re the best she\u2019s got. Still, we\u2019re not enough \u2013 not enough to warn her against dressing as a cutie-pie pierrot in canary yellow, nor to advise against the novelty nipple windmills, nor save her from the terror of the madhouise or the indignity of public exposure. When Greig, pale with shame and fury, vows \u2018I\u2019ll be revenged on the whole pack of you,\u2019 it\u2019s us she addresses. We\u2019ve let her down. We shared her dreams and let them die. Are we laughing? We should be ashamed of ourselves.<\/p>\n

Photo (top) of Doon Mackichan and Tamsin Greig, by Marc Brennan<\/em><\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter – @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What makes a comedy? Perspective. Ask Shakespeare\u2019s Malvolia, Titania, or Andrew Aguecheek if they\u2019re living in a comedy and they\u2019ll gaze at you with tear-stained incredulity. Publicly shamed, sexually humiliated, drugged and tricked into \u2013 oh yes \u2013 public sex with a donkey. Oh, how they laugh. Whether we laugh \u2013 or whether we\u2019re encouraged […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1474,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[285,250,65,32,34,128],"class_list":{"0":"post-1472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-a-midsummer-nights-dream","9":"tag-joe-hill-gibbins","10":"tag-national-theatre","11":"tag-shakespeare","12":"tag-theatre","13":"tag-young-vic","14":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1472"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1477,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1472\/revisions\/1477"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}