Review- A Midsummer Night's Dream- Shakespeare in the Port
20-4-15
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By: Chloe Chia
The Shax Theatre Group (STG) was founded in 2010 by five Shakespeare addicts from the University of Hong Kong. Over the years, membership of the group has expanded to double digits with the staging of six Shakespearean plays on and off campus. This is not the first time STG performs at Shakespeare in the Port. The group had a well-acclaimed record for making a guest performance with their “Downton Abbey” style Twelfth Night for last year’s SITP, thus prompting their return this year with another well-known bard’s work directed by the school’s alumna Rosalind Wong.
Written in the 1590s with combined elements of Ancient Greece and Renaissance England, the popularity of A Midsummer Night’s Dream spans four centuries and still remains one of the most influential Shakespeare plays today. Generally perceived as a romantic comedy, it draws on a magical and dreamy tone to explore through farce the fuzzy boundaries between fantasy and reality in the realm of love.
The actors and actresses in STG are mainly university students or recent graduates. Among the cast's young blood are a few who have shown tremendous potential for a promising acting career. While 'Dream' is fundamentally a love story conveying the intricacies of relationship between two couples (Lysander and Hermia, Demetrius and Helena) it is the mischievous fairy Puck (played by Debbie Chin) and the overconfident weaver Nick Bottom (played by Brian Lau) who grab the limelight throughout the play.
As a male fairy cross-played by a female, Chin’s portrayal of Puck is natural and professional. Similarly, Lau did a tremendous job in portraying Nick Bottom with his dramatic facial expression, rich vocal and bold body movement. However, it is only fair to mention they are the more experienced cast members, each of them actively and seriously engaged in theatre since primary school. Other cast members, especially Demitrius (Matthew Ko), Helena (Charlotte Mui) and Oberon (Desmond Chui) also deserve special mention for their performances.
The cast did a good job in triggering laughter at appropriate moments, especially with the whimsical farce of Pyramus and Thisbe, performed by the craftsmen on Theseus wedding. While Bottom was the greatest source of laughter throughout the play, it was in this climactic scene that the other craftsmen significantly showed their talents via vaudeville entertainment. Absurd and farcical was the point and they nailed it.
While the play is also supposed to exude a dreamy feeling, this production did not hit the nail so well here as it did for the funny spots. A main problem is the neglected development of the play's musical features. The production needed more music in more scenes to cultivate the dream atmosphere central to the audience’s emotional engagement with the play. Scenes requring singing, in particular, lacked the contagious qualities of music for reaching out to the audience. Peaseblossom’s solo in the beginning was especially weak and the finale ballad could have been better.
The biggest audio flaw, however, lay not in the music but the softness of the actors' and actresses’ voices. The lack of clarity and projection had an immensely deleterious effect, allowing the audience’s attention to drift away from the play. Perhaps they could have used clip microphones for each cast member? On top of that, a technical side note to mention is the costumes worn by the actresses seemed less glamorous than the debonair male costumes.
Overall, STG’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream delivered the humourous and comical notes but underplayed the melancholy and romantic elements of the story.
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Comments
Maggieeeee
I went to the both shows of them on Saturday and Sunday. They did a brilliant job and which deserves a better feedback. It is certainly not respectful to some actors. As I have been told on Sunday, I realized that they are not allow to use the floor mic. Therefore, they had to speak up as almost like screaming out.
22 April 2015
The Sunday performance is definitely better than the Saturday's one. Everyone showed the most original version of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The fairies are gracious yet a bit soft singing voices. However, you need to understand that they do not allow to use the floor mics which is not acceptable. I can totally get the spirit of the drama only by their body movements.
I believe that a good drama is brilliant even without any spoken lines.