On Stage (and walls) Melbourne: December 2010

December 4, 2010

Review - A Midsummer Night's Dream - Opera Australia

Transplanting Britten’s Shakespeare opera to an Indian setting was a seemingly illogical step by Hollywood director Baz Luhrmann but the result made for a popular production. Dating from 1993 Luhrmann directed this long before his rise to fame but his flair for exotica and rich visuals was apparent even then. Luhrmann’s relocating of the story from ancient Athens to 1920s India cashed-in on the trend at the time for Bollywood movies and Indian inspired fashion and décor. The world of Indian mysticism does, however, seem more suited to the mysterious world Britten creates in his score. These spirit beings are to be feared and to enter their realm should therefore be far more disturbing. Ravel did the same in L’Enfant et les Sortileges, his enchanted garden is an alluring but fearful place, so is Britten’s. This Midsummer Night’s Dream was a run-away success when first staged and, unlike any other production of a Britten opera, played to full houses. The production was so popular it was presented at the 1994 Edinburgh Festival to equal acclaim.

Having the fairies as Indian gods and the mortals as British Raj confuses the text and storyline and Luhrmann’s tendency to keep the action busy often spoils the nocturnal, dreaminess of most of the music. An English bandstand set in a park somewhere in India in 1923 dominates the set. The roof becomes a platform where Oberon oversees his magical ministrations while on stage level there is a pond below the bandstand where fairies and mortals meet. The orchestra have been relocated from the pit to the middle level and, dressed in military band uniform, are constantly in view as are the subtleties and inventiveness of Britten’s score.

The loveliest of the opera’s scenes, where Tytania awakens to the transformed Bottom is beautifully done here. Lorina Gore’s increasing ecstatic and extravagant vocal lines float around Conal Coad’s trombone accompanied bellowing and braying as Bottom.
With his genial, rollicking bass, Coad leads the mechanicals in their three scenes with great success. In the guise of an army entertainment troop, the effect is straight out of an English Music Hall parody of Italian opera along the lines that Britten and librettist Peter Pears intended.

The quartet of lovers is superb. Henry Choo’s ardent and honey-voiced Lysander sounds very much in the British tenor tradition. Choo’s first scene with Hermia is beautifully sung. Even more so as he sang the repeated “I swear to thee” phrases running up and down a staircase! Lisa Harper-Brown’s plaintive soprano beautifully contrasts with Dominica Matthews’s mezzo in the famous squabble which, here, becomes a cat-fight ending with both splashing about in the pool. The physical prowess of Opera Australia’s ensemble singers often matches their vocal prowess.

The most physical performance of all is Tyler Coppin’s as Puck. Does anyone cast a boy in this role anymore? But using an adult actor gives greater opportunity to create a character and with his small stature Coppin has the best of both worlds and looks like an adult trapped in boy’s body. His slapstick performance contrasts nicely with Tobias Cole’s stealthy, almost sinister Oberon. Perched above the stage with white face and blue, clawed hands and backed by Britten’s melismatic music Cole’s performance reinforces this role as still one of the best in modern operatic literature for a counter-tenor.

In a sound-world all of its own, Oberon’s music benefited from Cole’s restrained performance. With their prominence on the stage Orchestra Victoria, lead by Britten authority Paul Kildea, were able to glean every nuance in the fairies' music as well as the deliberately lumpen scenes for the rustics and their play. Despite its determination to please at all costs, the undeniable vitality of this production has made it a classic.

Britten - A Midsummer Night's Dream (1960)
Oberon - Tobias Cole
Tytania - Lorina Gore
Puck - Tyler Coppin
Theseus - Jud Arthur
Hippolyta - Catherine Carby
Lysander - Henry Choo
Demetrius - Andrew Moran
Helena - Lisa Harper-Brown
Hermia - Dominica Matthews
Bottom - Conal Coad
Quince - Richard Anderson
Flute - Graeme Macfarlane
Snug - Shane Lowrencev
Snout - Andrew Brunsdon
Starveling - Samuel Dundas
Opera Australia Children's Chorus
Orchestra Victoria
Conductor - Paul Kildea
Director - Baz Luhrmann (revival director - Julie Edwardson)
Designers - Catherine Martin & Bill Marron
Lighting Designer - Nigel Levings
State Theatre, The Arts Centre
December 4, 8, 11, 14, 16 & 18, 2010

pictured Lorina Gore as Tytania and tobias Cole as Oberon [picture Jeff Busby]

Q: What is the future of arts criticism, in your view?A: Blogs.
Anne Midgette, critic for The New York Times (The Washington Post as of February 2008)

Critics are like eunuchs in a harem: They know how it's done, they've seen it done every day, but they're unable to do it themselves.
Brendan Behan

A dramatic critic is a man who leaves no turn unstoned.
George Bernard Shaw

Reviewing has one advantage over suicide: in suicide you take it out of yourself; in reviewing you take it out of other people.
George Bernard Shaw

To a professional critic theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
George Bernard Shaw

Nothing makes me angrier than critics imputing motives to artists when they cannot know what those motives are. A critic's job is to be interesting about why he or she likes or dislikes something.
Peter Hall

A dramatic critic ought to have an eye for detail. If he has no eye for detail, he will never make a dramatic historian, for it is the detail that gives life. If he cannot distinguish the significant detail from the insignificant, he will be only a gossip-writer. But if he can recreate on the page what he has seen and heard on stage, and at the same time convey the emotional impression it has made on him, he will, in my opinion, be discharging his functions in a just and honourable manner.
Harold Hobson

One of the most characteristic sounds of the English Sunday morning is Harold Hobson barking up the wrong tree.
Penelope Gilliatt

A good drama critic is one who perceives what is happening in the theatre of his time. A great drama critic also perceives what is not happening.
Kenneth Tynan

No theatre could sanely flourish until there was an umbilical connection between what was happening on the stage and what was happening in the world.
Kenneth Tynan

The greatest films are those which show how society shapes man. The greatest plays are those which show how man shapes society.
Kenneth Tynan

Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.
Kenneth Tynan

A critic is a man who knows the way but can't drive the car.
Kenneth Tynan

Western man, especially the Western critic, still finds it very hard to go into print and say: 'I recommend you to go and see this because it gave me an erection'.
Kenneth Tynan

The critic ... has done his job if he evokes, precisely and with his prejudices clearly charted, the state of his mind after the performance has impinged on it ... He will find readers if, and only if, he writes clearly and gaily and truly; if he regards himself as a specially treated mirror recording a unique and unrepeatable event.
Kenneth Tynan

Has anyone ever seen a drama critic in the daytime? Of course not. They come out after dark, up to no good.
P G Wodehouse

You cannot have critics with standards; you can only have music with standards which critics may observe.
Alan Walker An Anatomy of Musical Criticism (1968)

Although he never read them, Gustav Mahler used the word 'superiors' when referring to critics.

I try to keep an open mind, even when viewing the dreariest efforts, that the people involved are not criminals ... Even an IBM machine blows a gasket now and then.
John McClain

I don’t think a critic needs to have written a play or to have acted. I do think he should appreciate the niceties of theatrical technique, the dramatist’s, the actor’s, the producer’s. He should be able, during any performance, to separate the strands of which it is made.
J C Trewin

To appreciate, in the best sense, is harder, more rewarding. Enjoy yourself, said C E Montague. “To make people like a thing you must delight in it first.” But (some argue) should not the critic be the ‘Keep Out’ notice, the growling dog, the speck of ratsbane? I feel that any writer perpetually cynical, perpetually displeased, should find work more congenial. It is possible to keep standards high, to be selective, to do the reader service without being ashamed of decent courtesy (‘softness’ is, I fear the cant phrase) or regretting that a notice has not been inscribed upon asbestos.
J C Trewin

When an impecunious music critic died in Vienna, his colleagues made a round of local musicians to raise money for the funeral."How much is my share?" asked one of them."Thirty kronen," was the reply."Here's sixty kronen," said the musician, "bury two music critics."
Quoted by Nicolas Slonimsky in A Thing or Two about Music (1948)

Critics are a dissembling, dishonest, contemptible race of men. Asking a working writer what he thinks of critics is like asking a lampost what it feels about dogs.
John Osborne

For the most part men without intellect, perception, sensitivity, or background, they pander to the tastes of the empty-headed, the bored, the insensitive, the complacent, who constitute the bulk of the agency trade and supply the golden stream upon which the Broadway theatre feeds.
Elmer Rice

There are two types of criticism, subjective criticism and bad criticism.
George Jean Nathan

Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.
George Jean Nathan

No chronically happy man is a trustworthy critic.
George Jean Nathan

The dramatic critic who is without prejudice is on a plane with the general who does not believe in taking human life.
George Jean Nathan

A good review from the critics is just another stay of execution.
Dustin Hoffman

I am sitting in the smallest room of my house. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me.
Max Reger, responding to a music critic

I do not wish to suggest that Australians are not natural theatregoers, merely that they look curiously relieved once on their way back to to their cars.
Sheridan Morley

I would as soon have the opinion of a stagehand as to the likelihood of a play's success as that of the drama's ablest observer.
Arthur Hopkins

The critic leaves at curtain fall
To find, in starting to review it,
He scarcely saw the play at all
For watching his reaction to it.
E B White

Sing a lament for the plays that fail -A dirge for the shows that fold.
A tear on the bier of the flops of the year
And the tickets that couldn't be sold.
Requiem sound for the overly ribald -The "ball in the air" that was faultily dribbled - And the play that had little to say.
Wringing of hands for the major fiascos,
The Saturday sundown of would-be Belascos
And the scenery carted away.
Sing a lament.
Sing for the actors who practiced in vain
Lines that were labeled inept and inane.
Sing for the orchestras down in the pits
Playing the numbers that sounded like hits.
Sing for the authors who wrote in the dawn,
The 'doctors" who came when the patient was gone.
Sing for the backers who put up the dough -One for backer and the two for the show.
Sing with your faces way down on the floor
The dancers, directors, the deans of decor.
Sing a lament.
Sing a lament for the plays that will fail
For Sullivan and McBride
But make it a wake for the critics' mistake -The Beautiful One that died.
Howard Dietz

...if one gives a concert that costs, say, 1000 marks, then one finds, some days later, according to the usual procedure, the 'review'. It usually runs as follows: "Herr X or Fräulein Y played Chopin in a very gifted fashion. Yet the final refinement of touch was lacking. A talent capable of development, which one would like to encounter more often."
Hanns Eisler On the Bourgeois Concert Business