Siobhan Redmond is currently playing Titania/Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Globe.
The production had some lovely touches. The seemingly obligatory doubling of the roles of Oberon/Theseus and Titania/Hippolyta gave us changes in accent - English vowels as the wedding couple, and Scottish as fairy royalty. As the actors are really Scottish, to me at least, it made the fairy characters seem more genuine than their English accented counterparts.
The staging was nicely done, with a deep blue gauze as a backdrop for the scenes in the forest. As we left the magical forest the fairies removed the backdrop by drawing it across the heads of the groundlings. This was a masterful stroke, literally removing a veil from their eyes. I'm not sure the groundlings were as happy as I was though, as they grabbed at vanishing glasses and caps gone astray, and started straightening mussed up hair.
Redmond was striking on stage, with fantastic hair (good enough for its own credits), crackling with energy* and being suitably regal. Of course she is great at doing regal anyway, using it to great comic effect in The Smoking Room. It's impressive what can be done with a suitably raised eyebrow.
I am also pleased to report that the crinkly packets of sweets are gone and the tubs are back, so no irritating crackles at quiet bits. Yay! Although I did manage to drop my whole tub of sherbet pips on the floor to startling effect. Oops. There may still be scope for more redesign on the whole sweetie packaging concept.
*Redmond, not the hair
1 comment:
I love it when theatre - theatricality, perhaps - is used to its best advantage. A measure of audience participation is of course what the Globe (and the Dream too) was designed for.
Too often with Shakespeare I feel that the fourth wall is one of brick and cement. There is a time and a place for that, but that time is not Shakespeare, and that place is not the Globe.
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