Face 2 Face Presents A Midsummer Night’s Dream

A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Teatro Alcázar is a colorful, entertaining summary of Shakespeare’s popular comedy.  Adapted by Face 2 Face, an English-language theater company based in Spain that specializes in educational theater, Midsummer is about one hour and twenty minutes long – and it retains only small amounts of Shakespeare’s original language.  The rest is performed in modern English. The focus is on teaching English to a foreign audience.

The show is performed on Saturdays and Sundays only and runs for the next three weekends.  I was surprised by the large turnout last Saturday afternoon.  The audience was predominately Spanish, and many came with their young children (who wreaked havoc in the lobby).

As I settled into my seat, a woman behind me got up and started to speak to a big group of Spaniards.  In English, she started to explain the plot to them.  She said that Titania and Oberon are the god and the goddess of the forest.  “Do you know what “god” is?  Dios,” the group answered enthusiastically. “And “goddess?”  Diosa.   What is fall in love?  Enamorarase,” some said. “Puck, who creates trouble between the gods and the mortals, is a “pixie,” do you know what a “pixie” is?” That stumped them, but at last someone said timidly, “Duende.  Yes, yes, duende.”

So the actors in this production, directed by Andrew Glaysher, had no small challenge before them.  They had to communicate Shakespeare, and portions of his beautiful but not always accessible language, to a non-English speaking audience that included many children.  No doubt the play was meant to be more of an educational tool than your typical entertainment.

Here is more or less how it went: Curtain comes up and the audience sees the head and spiky blue hair of Puck (Stephane Shaw).  An Indian musician (Thakur Singh) sings and plays the drums in the corner of the stage.  Wearing some kind of bright orange Indian garb, Puck rises up from behind a trunk and does a little pantomime with a fake set of legs.  Then he tosses off the fake legs, stands up, and gives an introduction.  He explains the basic relationships, in modern English, and the other actors appear on cue so that he can use them almost like props. (He’s endowed with the ability to freeze them, so that no one has to talk over each other.)  He points out Titania and Oberon, the male and female powers of the forest, who are fighting.  They wear Indian clothes.  Then Puck introduces the love quadrangle between Hermia, Helena, Demetrius and Lysander.  Each of these characters runs through the audience onto the stage.  They are dressed in frilly white dresses and white suits.  Puck speaks in modern English; the four lovers speak in Shakespeare’s English, and use facial expressions and gestures as a guide.

At first I didn’t really get the Indian clothing—it looked less Indian than like a mix of multicolor tie-dye from the Rastro, with a couple of leis thrown in, and Oberon was wearing something that looked like a banana-shaped handbag on his head—but as the show went on I understood that the clothes were used to separate the different worlds.  The Indian clothes indicated the forest-god-fairy world; white clothes indicated the lovers’ world.   The clothes also helped distinguish between the different kinds of English being spoken. Four of the actors (Andew Glaysher, Paolo Abbate, Veronica Polo and Lisa Krosnicki) doubled or tripled up on parts—playing Titania, Oberon, the four lovers, and also the actors who perform a show within-the-show in the forest—so the clothes helped to define their characters.  Puck, however, was Puck the whole way through.

The Indian theme also had the considerable advantage of allowing the otherwise incongruous Shakur to provide a live soundtrack.  His tabla music was excellent.  He played drums throughout the show and sang as well in the pauses between scenes.  His voice was immediately absorbing and also strange in contrast to the phony Indian picture presented on the rest of the stage.  I didn’t want his music to end.  Nonetheless, his drumbeat kept the show moving.  The show didn’t have the magic of Shakespeare’s original, but it kept good time and all the actors were highly energetic, sympathetic and capable as physical comedians.

So, yes, it was more of a teacher’s tool than a way of presenting the classic to English audiences already familiar with it.  Nonetheless, this production makes Shakespeare very accessible and illustrates some of the basic relationships of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.  It gives little snippets of Shakespeare’s poetry on the subject of male-female loves and disasters, provides some physical comedy and some excellent and unexpected music to boot.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through April 4th, Saturdays at 17:00 p.m. and Sundays at 12:30 p.m. Tickets are 15 euros. Teatro Alcazár. Metro: Sevilla.  For more information click here.

By Alexandra Atiya