{"id":1088,"date":"2015-07-18T16:08:36","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T16:08:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1088"},"modified":"2015-07-18T16:08:36","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T16:08:36","slug":"mendelssohn-its-the-sound-of-shakespeare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2015\/07\/mendelssohn-its-the-sound-of-shakespeare.html","title":{"rendered":"Mendelssohn: it’s the sound of Shakespeare"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Chris<\/a>

Chris Lew Kum Hoi as Flute\/Thisbe in A MIDSUMMER NIGHT\u0092S DREAM
Garsington Opera
Royal Shakespeare Company
Conductor Douglas Boyd
Director Owen Horsley
Under the creative guidance of Gregory Doran
Designer Rosanna Vize
Lighting Designer Caroline Burrell
Lysander Ross Armstrong
Helena Hedydd Dylan
Egeus\/ Philostrate David Collings
Flute\/ Mustardseed Chris Lew Kum Hoi
Hermia Joan Iyiola
Puck Oliver Johnstone
Starvelling Jake Mann
Demetrius Simon Manyonda
Snout\/ Pease Blossom Chris Nayak
Oberon\/ Theseus David Rintoul
Quince\/ Moth Tim Speyer
Bottom Forbes Masson
Titania\/ Hippolyta Marty Cruickshank
Snug\/ Cobweb Sophie Khan Levy
First Fairy Anna Sideris
Second Fairy Catherine Backhouse
Garsington Opera Orchestra & Chorus<\/p><\/div>\n

There\u2019s a bit of critical dissension about Garsington Opera\u2019s collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company on A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream<\/em> at the Getty estate at Wormsley (and going on to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London). I found it completely enchanting (though my wife did not).<\/p>\n

The first of several joint ventures for the Garsington company \u2013 next year they\u2019re doing Haydn\u2019s Creation<\/em> with the Ballet Rambert \u2013 it seems to me to augur well. What we saw and heard is an abridged version of Shakespeare\u2019s play with Mendelssohn\u2019s overture, op.21 and his incidental music, op.61., played and (two all-female numbers) sung by the Garsington Opera Orchestra and Chorus, conducted by Garsington\u2019s artistic director, Douglas Boyd. Owen Horsley directed the nicely whittled-down play \u201cunder the creative guidance of Gregory Doran.\u201d There were no sets, save a couple of platforms with sets of steps leading up to them, and few props except for a platform, a couple of cushions, a canvas deckchair, parasol and the odd chair; and the orchestra occupied most of the open stage.<\/p>\n

The venue is a perfect setting anyway, with the Wormsley homage to the Garsington Manor Italianate garden to the audience\u2019s right, and a little wooded land to its left. But the beautiful \u201ctemporary\u201d auditorium brings its own problems for the actors. The singers who perform in this structure learn to accommodate to the difficulties of projecting their voices in this huge pace, which resembles a large open-air theatre; but a few of the RSC actors hadn\u2019t yet got its measure at the second night\u2019s performance we saw. And Mr Horsley seemed to use the big stage mostly by getting the actors to race around it. I didn\u2019t much mind this, as it was done lightly and mostly with aplomb, but a smaller stage or more imagination is required for this production.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the actors are fine, with outstanding performances by Chris Lew Kum Hoi as a gorgeous, gracefully galumphing, baby-faced Flute (doubling as Mustardseed); Forbes Masson as a rudely agrestic Bottom; Hedydd Dylan showing comic talent as Helena \u2013 once she has woken; Simon Manyonda as a stick-thin and funny Demetrius; Oliver Johnstone, whose Puck improves as the evening goes on; David Rintoul doubling Theseus and Oberon; and Marty Cruikshank, who doubles Hippolyta and Titania, though her sexy, deep voice was not always projected successfully. Of course the best scene was the agreeably suggestive play of Pyramus and Thisbe, with more puns on \u201cstones\u201d than I\u2019d ever before noticed.<\/p>\n

Mendelssohn\u2019s music is pure joy \u2013 written for a production of the play at Potsdam in 1842, joined with the 1826 overture, written when the prodigy composer was 17. This was a sort of capitulation, an acknowledgment that he wasn\u2019t going to write an opera, but the music so enhances the play that you wonder why it\u2019s ever performed without it (the answers being expense and the absence of a big enough orchestra pit in most theatres). Everyone knows the overture, the scherzo, the glorious nocturne and, of course, Wedding March, but there\u2019s a good deal more to the score, including a weirdly prescient cod funeral march for Pyramus.<\/p>\n

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There\u2019s a bit of critical dissension about Garsington Opera\u2019s collaboration with the Royal Shakespeare Company on A Midsummer Night\u2019s Dream at the Getty estate at Wormsley (and going on to Stratford-upon-Avon and the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London). I found it completely enchanting (though my wife did not). The first of several joint ventures for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1088","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"entry","10":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-hy","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1088"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1088\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1088"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1088"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1088"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}