Despite its being commissioned for the 2012 World Shakespeare Festival and becoming a hit at the 2012 Edinburgh International Festival, cancel any expectation that this extraordinary production will offer any insights into, or distil any essence of, either A Midsummer Night’s Dream or As You Like It. 

The chandelier on stage has overtones of The Phantom of the Opera and it seems to start with a reference to Macbeth, when trees – or parts of them – migrate from the auditorium to the stage … then disappear, never to be seen again. Perhaps this is, or was, the Forest of Arden rather than Burnham Wood but more likely the remnants of an Athenian forest … but looking for logic or reason is beside the point here.

You may wonder at the long strips of cloth that drape the backs of the seats in the stalls – and wonder on till a fountain makes all things plain. Here you have a choice: keep watching the comical procession or shelter beneath the drapes. I watch and the pages of my notebook get soaked. The audience laughter blends delighted terror in the stalls with schadenfreude from the balconies. But if they offend, it is with goodwill.

As most of the men in the large cast (19 performers in all) cluster on stage and surreptitiously don their dinner suits, in a vain attempt to transform from ramshackle to sophisticated, a screen above them scrolls through a lengthy promise that they, the Mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, are meeting to conduct erudite discourse on the works of Shakespeare. Is our laughter here at the pretentious academic language or in fear that this may actually transpire?  

But wait – are we not enough as their audience? An elegant assemblage of personages files in, slowly – Russian theatre is never a speedy affair – to inspect the theatre and adorn the side boxes. Some we recognise as Wellington locals, not least that National Treasure Bill Sheat (why is he not Sir William?), whose untiring dedication to the performing arts includes establishing the Arts Council, the Film Commission, Downstage Theatre, the Hannah Playhouse … and ensuring this very theatre, the St James, has avoided demolition and been restored to well beyond its former glory.

But I digress, in the manner of this show, which has sort of started but is yet to start, its purpose being to present The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe before these toffs, and us. The prologues, spoken in Russian and translated on screen, are all the funnier for having passed through a Russian version then returned to a semblance of English.  

It helps to know your P&T because perceiving the variations and permutations as the story plays out makes for much of the fun. (If you want a refresher, check out The Beatles doing it about 50 years ago). On the other hand, knowing the original will cause you to miss the Wall, its chink and the kissing of the hole.  

There is a dog, however: a cute little Jack Russell who wins the hearts of the audience even if her performance would not get past round one of New Zealand’s Got Talent. She operates independently of the Moon, which is actually projected onto the cyclorama. And the face-off between the Lion and Dog is one of the show’s truest moments.

It may be said that the ancient tale is merely a starting point for a random assortment of clowning, circus tricks and theatrical spectacle. The lovers, when they finally appear, are gigantic junk-assemblage puppets, mobilised by multiple cast members. Which is not to say they lack ‘anatomical correctness’ and bodily functions. The former elicits shrieks of laughter, the latter is a lame joke that goes on too long.

Two singers – sometimes accompanied by guests in the boxes – bring a poetic level of emotion to the story that is usually absent (although we must remember Shakespeare places his comical travesty after the tribulations of the Athenian lovers and Titania with the ass-headed Bottom, more than a little Pucked up with state-altering drugs). Perhaps this aspect, which gives the show its heart, reaches back more to the original tale in Ovid’s Metamorphosis.

There is a dash of political humour too, with cracks about the KGB and a touch on gayness that subtly disses the Putin position. The minutiae of human behaviours is distilled through clowning skills. Circus tricks are employed to facilitate the exchange of flowers between the lovers. And there are cellphone gags involving the guests, whose dismissive behaviour and interjections of course equate to those of Theseus and Hippolyta in the original.

It’s all very entertaining but quite what director Dmitry Krymov’s major objective was, in the process of creating this show in his laboratory, is hard to discern. A part of me keeps musing on what a New Zealand theatre company might do with such resources of talent, time and money. Be they actors, clowns, circus performers, singers or musicians, most of them get but a brief moment to bring their talents to the fore. 

Inspired it may be but I doubt we’d be pleased if public money was poured into such monumental trivia. So go, laugh and weep.

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Pick up the phone right now and book a seat, if there are any left. 

This superb Russian production takes Shakespeare’s most popular comedy and leaps into an anarchic, fantastical comedy about those quintessential tragic lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe.

On entering the theatre we see on stage a large chandelier that made me think we had booked for The Phantom of the Opera. But then the performance starts with the arrival of the Forest of Arden which, once on stage, immediately disappears and is never seen or mentioned again. [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer