Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.It would be interesting to know what Freud thought of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He left countless references to Shakespeare, including a brief analysis of Hamlet, but nothing comparable on the imaginary world of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where the subconscious is set free.In writing his opera, Benjamin Britten kept true both to Shakespeare’s exact words, albeit cut, and drama. Productions of the opera have become increasingly adventurous in exploring what lies beneath the surface and Netia Jones’s new staging for Garsington Opera at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire has an individual take on it, which is in equal measure fascinating and puzzling.There is no need to recreate Shakespeare’s forest of dreams here. Garsington has its own, and we see the trees through the open wall at the back of the stage. Jones’s work as designer has been rather to create a surreal world with a flamboyant touch of Dalí about it — an oak tree growing out of a grand piano, a huge disc like a moon in shadow, a pair of scissors hanging on a thread.Towards the end of the play, Bottom tells us that this is “Bottom’s Dream because it hath no bottom”, but in this production it could be anybody’s, some of them because they are under the influence. The performance opens with Theseus staggering in, bottle in hand, and passing out. Later, Tytania seems high on the juice of the purple herb that Oberon has squeezed into her eyes.It is hard to keep track of all the detailed symbolism at work. Oberon appears in a fox head (why?). The longer the lovers stay in the forest, black splodges of the night grow over their bodies and clothes, and by the end they have acquired black-clad fairy doubles. Expect to do mental somersaults to keep up.What makes this production soar is the high standard of the music. Garsington has assembled a dream of a cast, led by Iestyn Davies as Oberon, finding new meanings in the text, and Lucy Crowe as Tytania, conjuring magical beauties with her radiant soprano. Jerone Marsh-Reid’s niftily acrobatic Puck appears as if out of thin air, though not all his words are easy to catch, and he is accompanied by an eager band of fairies from Garsington Opera’s Youth Company.A very fine quartet of lovers includes Camilla Harris as Helena and Stephanie Wake-Edwards creating merry hell with her fury as the despised Hermia. Caspar Singh and James Newby could hardly be bettered as Lysander and Demetrius. The four enter as lookalike schoolchildren, satchels in hand, and the drama becomes their rites of passage, as they are absorbed into the adult realm of betrayal and forgiveness. Christine Rice and Nicholas Crawley do well enough as Hippolyta and Theseus. They, too, seem to be doubles of Tytania and Oberon, as Shakespeare probably intended himself.The least successful of the three levels of players is the mechanicals; there are opportunities for comedy that the production misses. Even so, Richard Burkhard makes a clear, straightforward Bottom and there are delightful cameos from James Way’s Flute, a true prima donna in Thisbe’s flowing red ballgown, and Geoffrey Dolton’s physically pliable Starveling.Was it Garsington’s intimate acoustic or did the Philharmonia Orchestra really get Britten’s score to sparkle with more clarity than ever before? Possibly both, as conductor Douglas Boyd was outstanding in the sharp rhythmic cut and pace he brought to the music, not to mention the vivid character in every ass hee-haw and lion roar, every glint of enchantment. This performance should do well when it visits the BBC Proms later in the summer.★★★★☆To July 19, garsingtonopera.org
