A Midsummer Night's Dream - Queensland Ballet

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Posted 2024-04-16 by John Andrew ⇒ follow

Fri 12 Apr 2024 - Sat 27 Apr 2024

Welcome to a mysterious world of mayhem and frolic in an enchanted forest as Queensland Ballet presents Liam Scarlett’s choreographic interpretation of the Bard’s popular play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This work was performed by Queensland Ballet in 2016 and toured Australia-wide to positive audience responses and well-rated reviews. Previous Artistic Director Li Cunxin chose this piece for 2024 and it also toured regionally in October 2023.

It almost goes without saying now that we expect the calibre of Queensland Ballet performers will be outstanding and tonight’s performance was no exception. Lithe, exquisite, character-driven, expressive, confident and professional dancing was evident throughout all solo and group dancing. More of that later.

In the lead-up to writing this review, I found it helpful to revisit the plot of the original play by Shakespeare to see how the choreographer, Liam Scarlett, interpreted this lengthy and complex Shakespearian play and adapted it to dance. Essentially Scarlett, choreographing this work when he was only 29 (sadly Scarlett died at age 35), collapsed down the five interconnecting plots of Shakespeare’s play to essentially one centred in the enchanted forest (and even this had numerous plot twists). He also reduced the complexity of characters to two main groups onstage; those in the fairy realm ( Fairy King Oberon and Queen Titania, apprentice Puck and other fairies) and the mortals visiting the forest together (the four explorers; Lysander, Hermia, Helena and Demetrius and the rustics including Bottom).

Shakespeare’s original characters include well-heeled rules-bound Athenian characters from Ancient Greece, members of the working class who were performing a play within a play, and characters from the Fairie realm based on 16th-century Anglo-Irish folklore.

Interestingly Scarlett retained a non-dancing role of the changeling which can be mystifying in the simplified plot without an understanding of why this child was included by Shakespeare in the first place. Sixteenth-century Irish/English folklore held that fairies would steal infants they wanted as their human pets in the middle of the night and substitute them for others (changelings). This particular stolen infant caused a quarrel between the Fairy King Oberon and Queen Titania because Titania doted on him and Oberon wanted him ultimately for his henchman. To assert his power over Titania, the King sends his apprentice Puck to find a magical flower that can cause a person who is sleeping to fall in love with whatever she/he sees upon awakening. Oberon hopes Titania falls in love with an animal, thereby shaming her and in this shamed state giving over the control of the changeling to him. The remainder of Scarlett’s choreographed work captures the mayhem and bawdy romp that Shakespeare intended but with the significant bonus of ethereal and character dancing.

With the same costumes and stage sets Tracey Grant Lord originally designed in 2016, together with lighting designer Kendall Smith, a beautiful blue-imbued fairy costumed and magical forest was created with a thematically clever second tree-level tier for fairies to look over and exert their mischief on the mortals below. The action onstage I felt was a bit constrained by a busy set which left a smaller apron for dancers. But apart from this, by holding true to Scarlett’s original vision, the staging and design helped to explain some of the convolutions in the plot.

As a full-length two-act 100-minute ballet, Felix Mendelssohn’s original score of fifty minutes was extended by Queensland Ballet’s Musical Director and Principal Conductor, Nigel Gaynor, who added several of Mendelssohn’s other works with specially composed linking passages and orchestration. Recurring motifs in the score helped develop each of the main characters and their motives. For instance, Gaynor chose the Hebrides overture for Oberon’s theme, which originally was developed to portray a rugged Scottish seascape and its minor surging key helps to create the eerie threatening atmosphere befitting of the brooding controlling Oberon.

On the night we had beautiful elegant performances by Lucy Green as Titania and Joel Woellner as Oberon. Their final pas de deux was exquisitely romantic. Character roles were abundant for dancers, notably some convincingly lively and mischievous dancing from Kohei Iwamoto as Puck, some sensationally donkey-like moves from Rian Thompson as Bottom, and the nerdy bespectacled character Helena was delightfully hammed up by Chiara Gonzalez. Alexander Idaszak, Georgia Swan and Vito Bernasconi also convincingly danced out the mayhem of the crossed-wired lovers.

Midsummer Night’s Dream as the first performance for the Queensland Ballet 2024 season is therefore Leanne Benjamin’s inaugural ballet as the new artistic director. It is one that holds a special place in Leanne’s heart with fond memories of portraying Titania in her earlier career with the Royal Ballet. Tonight’s performance reflects the depth of combined experience from various quarters and, as such, weaves a seamless display of dance and storytelling. I think even the Bard would approve!