Performance review of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

¶ … Midsummer's Night Dream

Acting:

Were the actors believable in their roles?

I did not find all of the actors particularly believable in their roles. I could not help noticing that several of the members of the cast forgot their lines or misspoke their lines, sometimes saying a line in the wrong place. Knowing the play well, this really threw me off and took me out of the moment of the performance. I felt there was a lot of timing issues with the performers at well where they would not hit their mark or missed their cue.

Identify the performers you considered most successful.

Of all the performers in the play, I felt that the actress playing the role of Hermia excelled in her role. She made the love and despondency and anger very palpable which was conveyed easily to the audience.

If there were performers you did not like, identify them and explain why you did not like them.

The least successful performer in the play, in my opinion, was the actor portraying Lysander. Out of all the actors, he forgot his lines the most and most obviously. Given that this is one of the main roles of the performance, the actor should have prepared himself better.

4. Discuss how the performers related or failed to relate to one another. Did they listen to each other and respond?

The issue of timing and misreading lines comes up with regard to this question. When one of the actors messed up a line or forgot it, the other actors were visibly thrown off. Not knowing how to improvise, some just went forward with their dialogue which no longer made sense in the context of the conversation with the other actor. They seemed to acting at one another or against one another instead of as an ensemble working together.

Directing:

1. The director unifies a production and frequently provides an interpretation of the text. Did there seem to be a unifying idea behind the production? If so, how would you express it?

I found the directing of the play to be decent. It was acceptable, but not extraordinary. In works of Shakespeare, they have been performed so often and in so many ways that is fairly begs to have a definite directorial interpretation. Here it seemed as through the director was not inspired by the play but was merely putting on a production of A Midsummer's Night Dream. I feel this lackadaisical nonchalant attitude is reflected in the errors made by the actors.

Costumes:

1. What information was conveyed by the costumes about time, place, characters, and situation?

The costumes showed that the characters were either Athenian or they were the forest fairy people. There was a clear delineation between what is warn in the city and what the natural beings of the forest put on.

2. What was the period of the costumes?

The costumes were togas from the period of the Ancient Greeks, except for the fairies which aren't really of any era in particular.

1. What was the text about?

The text of A Midsummer's Night Dream concerns the romances of three couples, Hermia and Lysander, Demetrius and Helena, and King Oberon and Queen Titania. Each of the couples undergoes a conflict to be finally united at the play's end. It is about the silliness of love and emotions.

2. What was the author of the text trying to communicate to the audience?

The author was trying first and foremost to entertain his audience. Secondly, Shakespeare was trying to convey, to quote Puck, "What fools these mortals be." Love makes us do stupid things, like risk our lives. We hurt our loved ones and reunite with them and hopefully at the end of the quarrel, the lovers are closer together and not further apart.

3. What conflict seemed to embody the meaning of the text?

The major conflicts at the core of the text are the various issues that can arise when a man and a woman, or any two people for that matter, fall foolishly in love. It discusses the discord that can occur between a man and wife (Titania and Oberon), the struggles that lovers might face from a disapproving father (Hermia and Lysander), and the pain of unrequited love (Helena and Demetrius). Although in the last case, few such loves wind up living happily ever after.

Characters:

1. What were the major desires, goals, objectives, and motivations of the leading characters?

Egeus: wants his daughter to marry Demetrius regardless of her feelings on the matter and is willing to let her die if she refuses

Hermia: wants to marry Lysander because she loves him and is willing to elope with him to do so Lysander: wants to marry Hermia; he decides that they will elope to his aunt's house

Helena: wants to marry Demetrius because she is in love with him, even though he is always treating her badly; she wants his approval so much that she betrays her best friend's secret elopement

Demetrius: wants to marry Hermia because he is in love with her; goes into the forest for the explicit purpose of getting her and taking her back to Athens; is willing to let her die or be put in a nunnery if she does not acquiesce

Puck: is ordered to put the love potion on the Athenian's eyes and is then bent on correcting the wrong he has done; he wants to please King Oberon, his master

Oberon: wants Titania's slave boy and plots to use the love potion as a trick on hiw wife; plans to get Demetrius to fall in love with Lysander; orders Puck to fix the love lives of the four Athenians in the forest

Titania: wants to keep her slave boy, then she wants to love Bottom

Bottom: wants to play all the parts in Pyramus and Thisby