I went to the theatre on Monday. [Pauses to give you time to be impressed by the cultural activity. :)] I saw a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare in the Burgtheater.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is my favourite Shakespeare play (not that I know all). It’s intelligent and funny and sweet. I just love it. 

Unfortunately, this particular production [German] was not to my liking. 

They modernised it, which is not in itself bad (see Baz Luhrman’s Romeo and Juliet). And that wasn’t the biggest problem I had. You want Theseus to run around in a suit? Fine. But modernisation these days always means that people undress on stage. I’m far from being a prude and if you want to be naked all day or all play long, what do I care. But it has to fit the whole thing. And in this case, it didn’t. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is possibly one of the more explicit of Shakespeare’s plays, you don’t need to show Helena getting undressed to try to seduce Demetrius – it’s just not necessary. And you don’t need them to change clothes [Hermia dressing in Lysander’s clothes and vice versa, Helena dressing in Demetrius’ clothes and vice versa] to show that what’s happening in the forest is not normal. It is obvious without that.

But the bigger problem for me was the stage design. In the beginning, we see a tent, full with tables, in preparation for Theseus’ and Hippolyta‘s wedding. When the action starts in the forest, the tent falls down and it starts to rain some kind of plastic crumbs or something (see the picture), with the occasional pot plant [yes, it rains them too] and some plastic chairs. And voila, we have a forest. Or something. Problem was that a) it took ages till all of that stuff was there. b) the actors could harldy walk on it. c) when they walked you couldn’t hear what they were saying because of all the crunching. d) it took even longer to remove the whole thing for the final scenes.

And honestly, what kind of forest is that? If it was set in a desert or at a beach, fine. I still wouldn’t have been able to hear them, but at least the looks would have been there.

Another problem: Puck. Puck was played by a woman (no problem with that, Puck’s generally sexless for me), who obviously didn’t think him funny enough. So she spoke with a weird nasal voice (sounding a bit like Willi from Biene Maja), which made her difficult to understand and unbearable to listen to.
And she sang. In this voice. Twice. Some pop songs (can’t remember which ones right now). It was awful.
But the worst thing was her relationship with Oberon, which was abusive, to say the least. It’s not like Oberon would get the “best place to work” award in the original, but it was never that bad.

A minor thing, but still: the Indian changeling so wasn’t a child anymore. Which gave the whole thing a weird “Titania‘s having an affair and Oberon wants an affair with the same guy” feel. Which is not entirely impossible, but I don’t think that it was intended that way.

Oh, and while we’re talking about Titania and Oberon: In the original, Titania gets humiliated by Oberon, no doubt about it. But in this version, it’s even worse. Titania, upon discovering that she loved a man with a donkey’s head, starts wailing about how awful this is. Oberon forces her to dance with him, while she’s still crying, then throws her down and leaves her there. I have never seen a more inhuman version.

And, finally, they felt compelled to make the whole thing funnier. I tell you, this Pyramus and Thisbe might possibly be the funniest thing in theatre history. You don’t need to make Snug rap (horribly) to make people laugh. There were a few things like this. The only one of them, which really made me laugh, was when the whole group meets for the first time and Robin Starveling gets told that he should play Thisbe’s mother (he later goes on to play the moonlight). While the rest of the group keeps discussing, Robin tries several walks and positions from which he cries “Thisbe!”. That was really funny.

Not everything was bad about it. I thought it was a great idea to have the same actors play Oberon and Theseus and Titania and Hippolyta, respectively. [That the actress, who played Puck, also played Philostrate was fine, but not necessary.]

The acting wasn’t bad. Especially the Mechanicals were really cool. [Probably because nothing can destroy this version of Pyramus and Thisbe.]

And the fairies were really cool. Look for yourself:

But altogether, I was more annoyed than entertained.