Mendelssohn’s ‘mayhem, magic and music’ provides some much-needed light relief
An hour of ‘mayhem, magic and music’ provided some much-needed light relief for Sydney Symphony audiences this week.
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When Vladimir Ashkenazy made his debut as Sydney Symphony Orchestra’s chief conductor in 2009 he chose Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to launch his tenure.
Simone Young, in the first year of her term leading the SSO, also picked the 90 minutes of “mayhem, magic and music” in a collaboration with Belvoir St Theatre for a four-show production which was high on charm and brought some much-needed light relief to packed houses.
Directed and adapted by Eamon Flack, a troupe of seven actors (Virginia Gay, Sarah Meacham, Rose Riley, Jack Scott, Brigid Zengeni, Tim Walter and George Zhao) showed nimble versatility – and some great comic timing – as the group of Athenian movers and shakers who escape the summer heat and head for the magical wood with its fairy kingdom and a bunch of “rude mechanicals” determined to put on a play within a play.
From the famous woodwind chords that open (and close) the action, Young and her musicians were well and truly on point. Flack said of his adaptation: “Our goal has been to remarry the music and the play – to bring out the Shakespeare in Mendelssohn’s score, to let the music do the storytelling.”
Dialogue was kept to the minimum with the lovers’ scenes mimed quite brilliantly and hilariously throughout the Overture, Scherzo and Intermezzo.
Gay excels as Puck, playing the mischievous fairy as a teenage girl with attitude problems, and Walter and Zengeni are fine as Oberon and Titania. Here Flack has departed from the original, perhaps contentiously, by giving Titania the role of tormentor instead of Oberon.
“The replotting of the Oberon/Titania story is an emerging tradition in the performance of this play, as our culture works to rid itself of the misogyny that blights our artistic heritage,” he says.
Whether or not you agree, the marriage of play and music worked splendidly with Young keeping a benevolent, amused eye on interplay between actors and musicians, even allowing Scott (Demetrius/Bottom) a turn with her baton for a brief moment.
Cellist Timothy Nankervis took a bow for his bit of business with the troupe and special praise should go out to American Juilliard School undergraduate Gabrielle Pho, guest principal horn, for her beautiful handling of the solo in the Nocturne.
Australian-British soprano and local mezzo Anna Dowsley, now based in Germany, were both radiant in their short appearances and Cantillation provided the equally brief choral contributions
DETAILS
• CONCERT Sydney Symphony Orchestra/Belvoir A Midsummer Night’s Dream
•WHERE Sydney Opera House Concert Hall
•WHEN Friday, August 26
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