Robert Tanitch reviews A Midsummer Night’s Dream (As You Like It) at Barbican Theatre, London
There are no fairies, no Oberon, no Titania, no lovers; but before you say Puck, there are mechanicals. The Russian director Dmitry Krymov and his Moscow Theatre Laboratory concentrate on a performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. But without Bottom, which robs it of its comic point.
The mechanicals bring on huge trees and a huge spouting fountain (which showers the front rows, ho, ho) only to take them straight off-stage. The props are never seen again. The mechanicals then change on-stage out of their working clothes and into dinner jackets. They stand bunched very close together centre-stage, waiting to begin. There is an awkward silence.
Then through the auditorium comes a clack of upper middle class Russians who sit on the stage and later make comments on the performance, all of which are translated into English. The sur-titles stay surprisingly close to Shakespeare. The best written gag is a pompous academic statement.
On stage there are two acrobats and two giant rod-puppets, representing the ill-fated lovers. There is also a dog, a Russell terrier. He barks in all the right places and steals the show. Three weeks ago there was a duck on the Barbican stage. There is a well-known theatrical adage: don’t work with children or animals.
The production is very self-indulgent and laboured. But is it funny? Yes, it is funny occasionally, but I have seen far funnier (and far more moving) versions of Pyramus and Thisbe in traditional Shakespearean productions.
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