Beethoven’s
jig
Around the Globe,
the magazine of Shakespeare’s Globe, Issue 31, Autumn 2005. Heather Neill
welcomes a new user’s guide to the Dream by a versatile practitioner.
Michael
Pennington – actor, writer and practical critic – is the obvious successor to
Harley Granville Barker, the widely acclaimed early 20th-century
actor-director-playwright whose ‘Prefaces to Shakespeare’ are still consulted
by modern practitioners. This book is Pennington’s third analysis of a
Shakespeare text as director’s script, following ‘Hamlet’
(1996) and ‘Twelfth Night’ (2000). Pennington
knows his ‘Hamlet’, literally, inside out, having acted in it three times in
the roles of Fortinbras, the Ghost and Claudius as well as Hamlet himself. ‘Twelfth Night’
he directed three times before embarking
on the line-by-line discussion of directorial choices which characterises these
‘user’s guides’. Now ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ gets similar meticulous
treatment following his popular production of the
play at the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park in 2003.
In
his engaging introduction Pennington acknowledges that the play under
discussion itself dictates the style and tone of writing and the nature of the
material to be included. His treatment of ‘Hamlet’ is fascinating because
writing about it is, as he puts it himself, “to write about most of life”. ‘Twelfth
Night’ he found to be a comedy with tragic undertones. ‘A Midsummer Night’s
Dream’ can be funny, magical and touching, but there is a suggestion that Pennington
would have liked to find rather more in it, that the mining of the changing
emotions of mortals and fairies, the exploration of poetry and Shakespeare’s
choice of verse-structure for different purposes somehow didn’t lead much
beyond itself. And yet ultimately he finds great affection for the play: “This
is also like a jig written by Beethoven, a child’s picture by Francis Bacon; an
early masterpiece by someone who felt growing within him the power to see
further and deeper than any dramatist has done since”. ‘Romeo and Juliet’ would
follow swiftly in 1595. ‘Hamlet was some five years away. Pennington’s last
sentence, concluding the most enjoyable final chapter in which he describes the
building of his own production, ends with an acknowledgement of the ‘Dream’s’
power as theatre: it is “a brush with genius on the move, an open invitation to
the best night out imaginable from the theatre’s great dreamer”.
Solving
stage problems leads to some fascinating insights. Here is Puck as
down-to-earth mischievous Robin Goodfellow, “hobgoblin” even, who nevertheless
shows a feminine sensibility, administering “erotic correction” to ungallant
Lysander. Theseus and Hippolyta carry something of their legendary violent past
with them, but make terms “as if Mike Tyson and Emmeline Pankhurst decided to
marry”. Demetrius, buttoned-up and lacking imagination, is liberated into
romantic poetry by love-in-idleness. Bottom, Pennington decides, is both
genuine ass and “sunlit William Blake” in his love for Titania, but (in
contrast to other recent directors) feels that their encounter has an “odd
chastity” in it. And as for the fairies – just think of the confusions of size,
capable of affairs with humans but also tiny enough to creep into acorn cups. The
mechanicals and the lovers are perfectly distinguished, their separate journeys
delightfully documented.
Half
way through the book is a chapter entitled ‘Interval Music’ and her Pennington ranges
with obvious pleasure through music (Britten, Mendelssohn), painting (Blake, Fuseli)
and film (Max Reinhardt, Woody Allen, Michael Hoffman) inspired by the ‘Dream’.
This is fun and excellent for reference, but it cries out for illustration.
Who
will be the user of the guide? Anyone putting on a production, amateur or
professional, would do well at least to dip in for enlightenment about certain
scenes and would probably be hooked. Students may well not read every word (as
they might in the case of the ‘Hamlet’ book), but they could certainly benefit
from Pennington ‘s observation of character and tone as revealed in verse form,
especially in the expertly dissected lovers’ scene in the forest. And anyone
with so much as a passing interest in the ‘Dream’ will enjoy ‘Interval Music’
and the final, personal, chapter.
Pennington
is well-read, perceptive, a fluent and generous writer, exactly the right guide
for what he describes as “a report from the front on what happens to the play
in the heat of action”. He refers respectfully to Barker, but cannot help
noting his “tight-lipped primness” and calling for a better series for the
modern world. He seems to have embarked on just that.