A Midsummer Night's Dream

by Benjamin Britten 

(libretto by the composer and Peter Pears from Shakespeare's play)

seen at the Coliseum on 8 March 2018

Alexander Soddy conducts Christopher Ainslie as Oberon, Soraya Mafi as Tytania, Miltos Yerolemou as Puck and Joshua Bloom as Bottom in this second revival of Robert Carsen's production first seen at the Coliseum in 1995 and again in 2004.

In 2011 ENO performed a very different production of this opera, directed by Christopher Alden. Working against the usual cheerful mayhem of the libretto, but strangely still in keeping with the often eerie music (heavily influenced by Balinese gamelan, but by no means a pastiche of that style), Alden set the piece in a boys' boarding school where the squabble between Oberon and Tytania over the 'changeling boy' became a tussle between two teachers over a new favoured boy; the Athenian lovers were older boys attempting to encounter girls from a neighbouring school; the rude mechanicals were the crass ground staff and Puck was Oberon's current favourite about to be superseded by the newcomer. Theseus was an old boy of the school, evidently a previous favourite, watching in mute distress as the pattern of his own grooming by Oberon and subsequent displacement by the new boy was being repeated in the case of Puck. This all made for a troubling picture of endemic and cyclical abuse, which was extremely powerful even as it subverted one's expectations.

The Carsen production, designed by Michael Levine, is much more easily enjoyed. When the curtain goes up on the first act, the stage is an enormous bed with a brilliant green coverlet turned back to to reveal two gigantic and pristine white pillows. All else is a rich blue sky in which a crescent moon hangs. These massive slabs of primary colour are matched by the fairy costumes, the boys all in prim dinner suits of blue trousers and green jackets. Programme photographs show that they also have green moustaches. Oberon is dressed totally in green (with amazing green hair) while Tytania is in corresponding blue. The only colour distraction in the whole fairy world is  the bright red coverlet in which the changeling boy is swaddled, and the red gloves worn by the boys. The Athenian lovers start in white, but as their entrapment in the forest progresses, they seem to discard clothing, and what remains to them becomes increasingly stained green. The mechanicals are, not surprisingly, dressed in earthy colours while Puck is in rather down-at-heel greens and blues.

In the second act, seven double beds have occupied the stage, still green and white, which create the obstacles through which the Athenians are fleeing, the logs on which the mechanicals can sit, and finally the resting places of all the drugged or exhausted protagonists. In the third act, three beds are suspended in mid air, containing Tytania and Bottom, Helena and Demetrius, and Hermia and Lysander; they are lowered to the green ground as the scene progresses, and finally they rise again pulling with them the huge green cloth to reveal a white floor for Theseus's palace.

It is all brilliant to watch. In fact I have seen this production on each of its three outings, and I have a DVD from its performances in Barcelona, and each time I am more impressed. In this performance, the singers were clear and the parts well acted, though inevitably the boys' voices suffered the most in the vast acoustic space of the Coliseum. The orchestral playing was rich and evocative, giving due weight to the unearthly fairy slidings, the gamelan percussions, and the amusing parodies of operatic styles that Britten unleashes for the Pyramus and Thisbe play.

I had rather wanted to see the Alden production again for its dark vision, but it turns out that Carsen's view, with its startling primary palette, its fussily formal fairy troop, its mischievous but mature Puck and its well meaning am-dram mechanicals, is richly entertaining and well worth its revival. One feels here that the magisterial Oberon and his newly reconciled Tytania really can confer blessings on Theseus's house in the solemn final chorus before the irrepressible Puck breaks the spell with his typical high spirits.