Do3 – A Midsummer Night's Dream

[french frank]

Sunday 11 September
8.00-10.00pm

A fairyland quarrel causes a night of midsummer madness for two pairs of Athenian lovers and a group of amateur actors in Shakespeare's magical play featuring an all-star cast including Lesley Sharp, Toby Stephens, Freddie Fox, Robert Pugh and Roger Allam.

The play revolves around the adventures of four young lovers – Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius – a group of amateur actors, and their interactions with the fairies who inhabit a moonlit forest.

Their romantic intrigues are confused and complicated further still by entering the forest, where Oberon King of the fairies (Toby Stephens) and his queen, Titania (Lesley Sharp), preside.

With Freddie Fox as Puck, Robert Pugh as Peter Quince, Roger Allam as Bottom and Nicholas Farrell as Theseus, the production was recorded this summer on location in 22 acres of Sussex woodland, and features music by Stephanie Nunn.

Director/Celia de Wolff, Producer/Peter Hoare

[amateur51]

Aaaah Roger Allam's Bottom - what a glorious prospect!

EDIT: lest anyone think I was making a cheap joke, I believe Mr Allam to be a fine comedy actor ...

[vinteuil]

lest anyone think I was making a cheap joke, I believe Mr Allam to be a fine comedy actor ...

Yes, you WERE making a cheap joke.

And, yes, Roger Allam is a fine comedy actor...

{had he done nothing more than Cabin Pressure, his immortality wd be assured!}

[amateur51]

Yes, you WERE making a cheap joke.

And, yes, Roger Allam is a fine comedy actor...

{had he done nothing more than Cabin Pressure, his immortality wd be assured!}

Did you see Roger Allam on stage in the revival of the 1960s hit comedy Boeing Boeing, vints?

Or the revival of Privates On Parade at the Donmar as Captain Terri Dennis?

"Oh that Bernadette Shaw! What a chatterbox! Nags away from arsehole to breakfast-time but never sees what's staring her in the face."

Not unlike a few on here, no names no packdrill eh?

[austin]

Little video about the production here.....

http://tinyurl.com/3qbslvj

[french frank]

Little video about the production here.....

http://tinyurl.com/3qbslvj

Nice find, austin! I'll have to try to forget the image of Titania in dark-rimmed specs but I'm really looking forward to this one.

The poetry sounds very good.

[austin]

So much poor reading these days (IMHO) but I live in hope that this will prove that some actors can still read well! Love the bit about the storm.

[aeolium]

I thought this was an excellent production, and a very good start for the Do3 autumn season. The emphasis was on the poetry, and the fairies were all very good, especially Oberon and Titania. Nicholas Farrell as Theseus also stood out, but the whole cast deserves praise. Sound effects were discreetly used (I didn't much notice the woodland background which was used for the recording). It was a welcome chance for me to rediscover this work, surely one of the best of the comedies, and to marvel at the evocation of the natural world in the poetry of the fairies.

[DracoM]

Crumbs, aeolium, quot homines etc......!

I'm afraid I turned it off. I had been truly, truly looking forward to Roger Allam.l but frankly that lapidary Bottom - mummerset or whatever accent sliding all over the place and for me, who admire Mr Allam enormously, just NOT funny in any shape of form. And the whole show was SO, so slow! The girls spent most of the time whining and moaning. I was dying for some backbone, some feisty reaction to the pretences and tricks. And that totally invertebrate Puck - what a drip! About as much sense of sparky machiavellian juggling as a glass of water. Radio can get so close to these things, but not here. Oh dear. I've never turned off a Shakespeare play on radio in my life - until now.

[PatrickOD]

I wanted it to be as message 8, but found it more message 9. Sorry aeolium. I did not exactly 'turn it off' which would be a cruel thing to do, but I drifted away and read it instead.

[french frank]

Well, that's one for and one against

I've just finished 150 minutes of Breakfast so don't feel like listening any more tonight. I wonder which way I'll go ...

Edit: one for and two against

[aeolium]

Oh well, I have to admit it's the poetry I listen to it for, not really the drama. Yes, the girls were a bit petulant, but there's a fair bit of that in the text. Roger Allam's accent was a bit no-man's-land but he couldn't have just played his usual posh voice. I quite liked his interchange with the fairies. I don't like too much in the way of histrionics - it stops you hearing the words properly.

[aeolium]

I've just finished 150 minutes of Breakfast

You do suffer heroically in the cause of art, ff - I couldn't do it

[french frank]

You do suffer heroically in the cause of art, ff - I couldn't do it

Actually, it wasn't quite true. I skipped some of the music (though the bits are too short to give me a lot of pleasure anyway). I'll have to do Essential Classics too but perhaps I'll listen to MND tomorrow - for a treat

[french frank]

Re-reading Draco's post, I just don't recognise anything about it in the production I heard.

Slow? Well, at two hours they could have cut some more out of it, but if time is available, I'd prefer them not to. Like aeolium, wherever they're spoken (radio, TV, film) I do like to hear Shakespeare's lines well-spoken - and these were. Listening (as one does!) very intently on radio there were just the few occasions where I felt the meaning had drifted away from the actor - possibly - but otherwise it was very fine.

This is probably the first time that I've experienced the Rude Mechanicals as traditional comic relief, with Theseus the stern autocrat, Egeus the vengeful father in a potentially dark play. The lovers were suitably impassioned. As for Roger Allam having a Mummerset accent - not to my ears - no hint of West Country about it. Perhaps I should get up north more often, because it sounded to me like 'typical', hmmm, dunno, Bradford? For me, he was the typical braggart with, when needed, the roar of the old-fashioned professional ham. No, it wasn't very funny, but then, Shakespeare's comedy isn't generally funny for our sophisticated comedy ears.

The 'mischief' of the fairies also came over as quite dark, marked not by fun but by the destructive vindictiveness of Oberon, the women being alternately loved and spurned put in better performances than is often the case when they have to play some of Shakespeare's female roles.

A definite for me. [I will only confess to feeling a bit tired at the end, having started to listen at 9.30pm after a long day and missed something of the light sense of resolution.]