by William Shakespeare
Directed by Tim Supple
A Luminato Presentation at the Canon Theatre
June 6-15, 2008

    I have had a most rare Dream which “the eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen.” A dream in which East meets West in an exotic spectacle without a dull moment. Part circus entertainment (with acrobats swinging and dangling upside down from ropes and cloth vines when they aren’t wrapping themselves into cloth cocoons or tumbling about), part florid East Indian melodrama (with three on-stage musicians who play drums, percussion, and wind instruments), this Dream, as with all successful Shakespeare, defies expectation. Visually striking from the outset—its white cloth backdrop quickly transformed into a forest of tattered cloth shapes as the fairies burst through—it honours Shakespeare’s universality while showing how he is never less than relevant to any particular age or setting. Director Tim Supple (whom our Stratford should tempt to its festival stages) wisely seeks to create a colourful popularization rather than a reverent homage. He owes something to Peter Brook (is there any other successful modern Shakespearean director who doesn’t?), but Supple has melded two great theatrical traditions—English and East Indian—in this production, without sacrificing the romanticism, comedy, and charm of the play. This is a production that could make willing converts of Shakespeare haters.

   Shakespeare’s characters are re-invented in the telling but without seemingly alien to the nature of the fable. Theseus is an explosive Indian ruler; Titania an enchantress who could easily find herself in a Bollywood movie. The tradesmen are thoroughly in the Indian vein with their mannerisms and peculiarities, and they, too, love to dance in the folk manner. Puck is a strutting, cackling spirit of mischief, adorned with a Mohawk, moustache, black leather bindings around arms and chest, bulging red briefs. He starts the play with gentle ritual, pouring water over a small, gleaming black lingam, then passing his palms over the surface to produce a watery music. All the players are barefoot, which leads to little clouds of dust in their most excited moments—as when the quartet of lovers perform their hectic permutations of ardour and repulsion—or when Theseus or Oberon (played by the same actor) asserts his authority physically, even to the point of a lathi fight. Costuming tends to be gaudy in the Indian Bollywood vein, just as the lighting seeks lurid purple or (more understandably) green.

   Passion is never deficient—right from J. Jayakumar’s aggrieved Egeus and Archana Ramaswamy’s Hippolyta to the four lovers entangled in love’s complications and the four “mechanicals” who never patronize one another or Shakespeare’s comedy. This is a group of players who speak, for the most part, in their native tongues (Hindi, Bengali, Tamil, Sanskrit, Malayalam, Marathi, and Sinhala), making the text sound natural, whether rushed in gusts of passion or measured for character notation. English is used sporadically, more as pointers or punctuation, the most famous lines, of course, being sounded as touchstones for the play. On this score, apart from the Hermia of Yuki Ellias and the beautifully phrased Helena of Shanaya Rafat, Shakespeare’s English often sounds strangely foreign—especially in the mouth of Titania/Hippolyta (Ms. Ramaswamy), who seems to have learned it phonetically, though her strong stage presence and acrobatic flexibility stand her in good stead for the physical side of things.

   One prominent feature of this production is its candid sexuality. Oberon is bare-chested and rather exhibitionistic about it. He also suggests a little more than merely a platonic relationship with the boy stolen from an Indian King. Demetrius and Lysander can hardly stop themselves from fondling their lovers; Titania actually touches Bottom’s donkey-phallus, and there’s no question what she does with him in her love-nest hammock. Sex frequently raises itself—even more than politics, but that is justified by the eroticism of the play. After all, midsummer was the time of sexual festivals and release, and there are erotic subtexts in the relationships of Theseus-Hippolyta and Oberon-Titania. Moreover, Bottom’s transformation is itself explicitly sexual, for the ass is reputed to have the strongest penis in the animal world, though on whose authority, of course, I cannot say.

   On the farcical and satiric side, there’s nothing to top the “mechanicals” and their Pyramus and Thisby performance. The actors play recognizable Indian tradesmen—one burdens himself with a shoulder yoke and clattering pots—and their peculiar mannerisms never patronize the text. Unlike most professional actors in the West—especially of the classical sort—these performers do not seek to burlesque amateurs; nor do they seek easy laughter for its own sake. They always remain true to their characters, and the comedy is all the richer for it. Of particular note are Vivek Mishra’s grey-bearded Quince, all seriousness in his effort to organize his troupe and comic frustration at their ineptness, and Joy Fernandes’ boisterous Bottom, one of the funniest I have ever seen. His Bollywood song and dance (with his ass’ ears and wobbling phallus) are a comic riot, and one of the best reasons to see this production that often puts our Stratford to shame.

pic 1: Titania

pic 2; Puck

pic 3: Titania and Oberon

pic 4: Bottom, Titania, and Fairy


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