A Midsummer Night’s Dream: Play and Film
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of William Shakespeare’s most poetic plays. The language is lyrical as it describes the characters’ surreal journey through fairyland. The play is difficult to stage, but lends itself well to film: the action moves quickly, keeping the story interesting for a film audience perhaps less patient that those who would see the play acted live, and the magical themes and scene changes are most easily achieved on camera. However, there are many different interpretations of Shakespeare, and some of them do fall flat. The 1996 film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Adrian Noble, carries off the dream-like qualities of the play, but much of the action and scenery feel too abstract, the dialogue too dramatically spoken. It would, perhaps, be a good film for children, if not for the overly sexualized Puck (Finbar Lynch). Despite the happy ending, the film seems more nightmare than dream.
The sets make little attempt to call back Shakespeare’s era, a choice on the filmmaker’s part that works well to keep their modern viewers engaged. Instead, the sets focus on the dreamy qualities of the play. The first set is that of a young boy’s (Osheen Jones) bedroom. We are introduced to the room through the open window, looking in from a cloudy sky. The boy is as much a part of the set as the toys scattered around the room: puppets, a small stage, and books, including A Midsummer Night’s Dream itself, upon which the boy’s hand rests as he sleeps. This first impression of the film makes it clear that the story itself is a dream – one of many interpretations of Shakespeare’s work.
The two other sets we see briefly, Theseus’ (Alex Jennings) house and the meeting place of the mechanicals, provide similar impressions of dreaming, in the candlelight of Theseus’ house and the assortment of pictures, flags, trophies, and kitchenware of the mechanicals’ set. Both sets provide an impression of their inhabitants’ wealth – great for Theseus, little for the mechanicals.
It is the set of the woods – in which the characters spend the most time – that falls rather short of expectations. From full rooms, we transition to a very abstract space. Instead of trees, we have light bulbs hanging from string extended from an invisible ceiling. The fairies make use of umbrellas, climbing on them and using them to float through the air. The fairy queen Titania’s (Lindsay Duncan) bed is a giant pink umbrella, lined with pillows. The overall effect is surreal, but ventures too far in the direction of Dr. Seuss and makes the action in the woods hard to take seriously. The characters travel by passing through doors set up in the middle of the stage, and the passage of time is shown through shots of a large moon rising and setting over a vast expanse of water. The film seems to take place half on a stage and half in the real world, which is a strange juxtaposition with the minimalist staging of the woods.
The use of the camera, however, is very much a film-only technique. In the first scene, while the boy is walking down the series of short, dream hallways that lead him to Theseus’ home, the camera is tilted, so the boy appears almost to be walking along a slope. The camera rotates slightly, reminiscent of a bad dream more so than a good one. Throughout the play, the camera frequently moves to the boy’s face, showing us his wide-eyed reactions to the action. These seconds of staring, while they reinforce the idea that the story is a dream, distract from the plot of the film as a whole. They constantly force the viewer out of the story with reminders that we’re watching a film. Shakespeare uses this technique of reminding his audiences that his plays are not real during the play-within-a-play that takes place at the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but this film takes it a little too far – just a few too many reminders make it difficult to remain engaged in the story. Also, the use of the camera serves to give the impression that the dream is actually a nightmare in its use of transitions. Twice, we see the little boy sitting up in bed, crying out for his mother, during intense moments in the play, but the story continues as if he never woke. He also dreams of falling through darkness and of an umbrella flying through a storm to be caught by Puck in the calm woods. Another nightmarish element, though doubtless not intended that way, is the actors’ constant eye contact with the camera. We zoom in on their faces and they stare at us as they speak. Used a few times, this could be a tool to communicate exceptionally strong feelings or important moments, but in its frequency it simply becomes disturbing. These nightmarish qualities could be the filmmaker’s attempt to parallel the hints of tragedy in the mechanicals’ play later, and done more subtly it could have worked well.
The eye contact is not the only aspect of the acting that feels overdone. The delivery of lines is too focused on the poetry and not enough on meaning. While the intentions come across, the speakers come across as too dramatic to be true and are hard to connect with emotionally. Of the major characters, Hermia (Monica Dolan), Lysander (Daniel Evans), and Demetrius (Kevin Doyle) are the most impressive, though Demetrius’ main recommendation is that he is neither bad nor good. He delivers his lines simply, but is slightly too emphatic to be believed. Lysander wears a constant little smirk, which at first gives the impression that he is smug and unfeeling, perhaps simply faking his love for Hermia, later comes across as charming and genuine – he can’t stop smiling when he looks at Hermia. The initial smugness proves to be an advantage in the later scene where he is drugged to dote on Helena (Emily Raymond): it does not seem out of character, and we see in his expression no true love for her as there is for Hermia. Hermia herself delivers her lines the best of all the cast – she speaks them as if they just came to her mind, rather than as poetry she’s memorized, rhyme and meter. A few times she does speak awkwardly, in poetry rather than simple dialogue, but for the most part, the poetry of her lines speaks for itself without her feeling the need to enhance the rhymes with carefully placed pauses. Helena, on the other hand, with her wide, dark eyes and short hair, comes across as very nearly insane. Her rapid switching from despairing to happy and constantly emphatic line delivery are too dramatic to be sane, an impression that is only emphasized when she goes down on all fours and pants like a dog to prove her devotion to Demetrius. In the written text of the play, Helena is pathetic in her worship of Demetrius; in the film, she’s out of her mind.
Hippolyta (Lindsay Duncan) and Titania, despite being played by the same actress, are opposites in manner, and neither rings true. Hippolyta hardly speaks, hardly reacts to anything, save to slap her husband-to-be, Theseus, for siding with Hermia’s father against her. That reaction is abrupt and shocking, not at all in the character we’ve seen of Hippolyta thus far. Titania, on the other hand, speaks frequently, but she says each line as if she’s an oracle, delivering prophecies. Every word is low and spoken with the weight of fate. It could have been amusing, as Titania’s character is meant to be, when she waxes poetic about Nick Bottom (Desmond Barrit), but she uses the technique too often and it loses its advantage.
Similarly Theseus and Oberon (Alex Jennings) are played by the same actor and are opposite in character. Theseus is quiet and genuine, authoritative but kind, though his lines are spoken just a shade too much in poetry over natural dialogue. Oberon, however, is frightening and almost comes across as evil. He growls his lines and stares hard at the camera without blinking. It doesn’t help that our first impression of him is selfish, demanding his wife’s new servant boy for his own and forcing her to dote on an ugly creature in revenge for her refusal. He has one genuine moment in his regret for the trick. He seems truly sorry and wishes to undo it, and in that moment he is more than an actor in a film, but a person. This speaks to a modern audience – in Shakespeare’s time, wives were meant to be submissive to their husbands. Oberon coming across as a villain is more in line with current values, in which a wife and husband are equal partners. However, Oberon’s character taken out of its time is difficult to grasp as realistic, and would perhaps have been better off left as a husband demanding his right.
Of the more minor characters, those playing the mechanicals are easily the most impressive and convincing. They each have few lines, but those lines are delivered simply and believably. It helps that their characters are by nature less grand than the major characters and so have less grand lines. Bottom, who speaks the most of the mechanicals, is not as loud and enthusiastic as his character calls for. He’s less eager to jump in and take every part in the play they put on, but his quieter manner does speak to a major theme of Shakespeare’s comedies: the happy fool. In this film, Bottom doesn’t need to be loud and brash, because he takes everything as it comes without question. Even in his moments of indecision as Titania seduces him, he’s willing to let life move along.
Puck, conversely, is much more insolent and sexualized than he seems in the text of the play. He is very sexual in the film, particularly in the way he climbs suggestively over every sleeping female. The Puck of the play is mischievous, but the Puck of the film is sinister. He also tends to deliver his more expository lines as if they were only poetic, concentrating on rhyme rather than meaning and context. He does have one redeeming moment, just before the mechanicals put on their play at the end of the film. In an unexpectedly sweet gesture, Puck notices the boy standing alone and takes his hand to lead him backstage. This feels more in line with the Puck of the play, a scheming fairy but one whose heart is in the right place.
The costumes, like the set of the woods, give the film a Dr. Seuss vibe. The fairies, in particular, are dressed in brightly colored fluff and feathers, with big hair and a good deal of skin showing. They are indistinguishable from each other, except for Oberon and Titania, who are fully dressed: Oberon in a suit fitting a Renaissance nobleman, and Titania in a long, bright pink feathered dress. Nothing in the fairies’ appearances calls to nature or the woods. They are garish cartoons, not like the fairies implied in the text of the play.
Hermia and Helena wear dresses of identical style and different colors, while Demetrius and Lysander are set apart by Lysander’s long, green coat. The only difference between Hermia and Helena is Helena’s short hair, which would make her look like a boy if not for her lined eyes and dress. This is an interesting switch from the play, in which the girls were very different from each other and the boys nearly identical. It allows their characters to speak for themselves, without the aid of appearance, but it also lessens the drama of Lysander’s and Demetrius’ suddenly doting on Helena over Hermia.
Theseus’ costume is the most striking of the non-fairy characters. His long, golden coat drags over the ground behind him like a wedding gown’s train. While it gives the impression of grand wealth, it is somewhat distracting and cartoonish, and harkens back to the Dr. Seuss atmosphere of the fairies.
While most of the scenes in the film are colored irrevocably by the costuming and too-dramatic acting, there are a few that speak genuinely to the audience. When Puck uses the herb to cure Lysander of his drugged doting on Helena and reunite the lovers, the abstract setting is in the film’s favor. They each fall to lie apart from the others, Hermia and Lysander to one side and Helena and Demetrius to the other, all resting on white sheets. They are lifted up, into the air, while dreamy music plays in the background and the boy twirls in place beneath them. We see faded images of the lovers embracing. This allows us to see them reuniting without dwelling on it for too long and drawing the play out, and finally reaches the dream-quality that the film has been striving for all along.
The mechanicals’ play, too, was truly enjoyable. The acting, of course, is terrible, but in those moments it is meant to be, and we can laugh at them even as the newly married couples do. It is a reminder of tragedy in the midst of comedy, but it is kept light-hearted so that we don’t feel let down by the play, and we still end on a high note.
The musical score fits the film well. It remains entirely orchestral throughout, slow and dreamy at times and faster, louder during the more dramatic scenes. The mood of each scene is determined by the tempo and dynamics. The music also largely determines the pacing of the play, which runs smoothly until near the end. As the characters’ difficulties begin to come to their conclusions and resolutions, the play seems just a bit too long and slow. The music is slow and quiet there, close to a lullaby, and does not aid in holding the viewers’ attention. However, it quickly picks back up again with the mechanicals’ play and remains at an engaging pace until the end.
The film as a whole was very different from my initial reading of the play. I felt the play was light and intended to be harmless fun with a gentle message. The film, however, frequently felt sinister and dark, almost frightening at times. The Dr. Seuss staging and costuming were bizarre and distracting, where the play should have been able to speak for itself and hold its viewers’ attention. While the film’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s intentions is valid – there certainly can be sinister themes in Oberon’s domination of Titania, Hermia’s being forced to marry Demetrius over Lysander, and Demetrius’ cruel jerking around of Helena’s feelings – I prefer my initial interpretation of the play: that of a lighthearted comedy of foolish people in which everything comes out all right in the end.