Titania        Yvonne Kenny
Indian Boy     Arthur Pita
Oberon         Thomas Randle
Puck           Simon Rice
Theseus/Hymen  Mark Richardson

Mary Hegarty, Janis Kelly, Mark Le Brocq, Ryland Angel, Deborah Peake
Jones, Christopher Robson, Jonathan Best, Peter Snipp

Conductor      Nicholas Kok
Original director
               David Pountney
Revival director/choreographer
               Quinny Sacks
Costume designer
               Dunya Ramicova

David Pountney's production takes all the music of Purcell's A midsummer
night's dream and treats it as something like ballet music. The action is
based on the plot of the play, but reduced to the feud between Oberon and
Titania, and romantic confusions between six mortals. First produced in
1995, the production looks like a throwback to the powerhouse days in many
of its details, but it has much of the emotional charge of one of Mark
Morris'. (The revival is directed by the original choreographer.) It's also
worth hearing as a totally engaging performance of the music that pushes it
to its expressive limits.

The set consisted of flats as building in the city, which were turned
around for the forest. There were rats for the city (cleaned away by
Titania's fairies, but back by the end) and butterflies for the fairy
world. The fairies wore a mixture of punk and post-modern, while the
mortals wore grey suits which they predictably shed.

The entertainment begins with the row between Oberon and Titania. Thomas
Randle as Oberon looked like an elemental Michael Jackson, but the boy,
Arthur Pita, was definitely grown-up, and all the more interesting for it.
Randle's singing is electrifying, though sometimes haywire. A couple of
years ago I thought he didn't have the staying power for Handel, but he
certainly has the theatrical skills and charisma, and the energy, for
Purcell's Oberon.

Yvonne Kenny's Titania was sensuous and forceful at the same time. She
really came into her own when Titania blessed the mortals who had paired
off with "Thrice happy, lovers", then immediately lamented her own
humiliation (Oberon had enchanted her and made her sleep with a donkey, as
in Shakespeare) and the loss of her beloved boy. I was reminded strongly of
Kenny's performance as the Marschallin, another grown-up woman who still
mourns her lost youth. But when Oberon takes the lovers to China (sic) and
tries to marry them, she blasts them all back to wherever they were before,
using "Hark the echoing air" as a fight song. This was very funny, and just
about justified by the aggressive exuberance of the music.

The lovers were two colourless mixed couples who snuck under the table
during a tedious meeting run by King Theseus, plus Dick (Christopher
Robson, very funny and sympathetic), who snuck under the table as well but
found he was still alone (I know this guy well), and the Drunken Poet
(Jonathan Best). Best did a great turn as a drunken Richard Nixon in the
Glyndebourn Theodora. This time he was more Boris Yeltsin, pushing Nicholas
Kok off the podium and conducting himself. With a touch of Father Jack.
Dick and the poet paired off at half time, after "Now the maids and the
men", in which the coy maid Dick insists "no kisses until we're married".

The overall effect was beautifully dream-like, and often very moving. The
orchestra was small (only one double bass, some period instruments). It
took me a little while to get used to the small sound in the massive space
of the Coliseum, but the magic kicked in with "If love's a sweet passion",
one of Purcell's most haunting melodies, sung by Mary Hegarty and Janis
Kelly as a dreamy background as the lovers reconvened in their sleep.
(Yvonne Kenny sings a lovely, though ironic, version of the same melody as
Lucy in the recording of Britten's Beggar's opera.)

Where you'd expect a dream-ballet, dead in the middle of the performance,
Pountney put a semi-satirical masque. Instead of an original masque of the
seasons to celebrate Oberon's birthday, we got Theseus as Victor Meldrew,
refusing all his birthday presents, ignoring the merry dancing and singing
of his family and friends and, finally, calling for his coffin and lying
down to die. Mortality was firmly located in the city, but in the context
of the seasons -- nature and death are real life. Though Theseus returns at
the end as Hymen, to oversee a chaconne of the couples, and the final
reconciliation of Oberon and Titania, based purely on familiar desire,
which persuades them both to give up the boy. (The program refers to nine
masques, but I'd describe all but two as scenes, as they don't have the
formal characteristics of masques.)

The rest of the cast was pretty good. Simon Rice as Puck was primus inter
fairies, often part of an ensemble, or mirroring Oberon, but an outstanding
dancer. Ryland Angel looks and sounds like a conventional Anglican
counter-tenor, but he delivered some magic in "One charming night", doing
Puck's regular job of spreading the love potion. His voice is in much
better shape than Robson's, but he hasn't been singing at the Coliseum for
almost 20 years. They formed an amusing sixties-seventies convergence duo
for Theseus' birthday celebrations.

I heard mutterings on the stairs about the orchestra, misguided, I think.
Purcell doesn't need rhetorical baroque performance -- this isn't about the
control of form and structure, but about the development of mood and the
expression of emotions. None of it makes "sense", but you can feel every
moment.