I’ve been living the past week in London as part of a month long study abroad program through my college. Since it is an arts program, we’ve gone to a concert almost every single night. One of the only plays I recognized (and so was excited about) was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at The Globe. We were all so pumped about going to see a Shakespeare play in The Globe… Our experience, however, turned out to be less than amazing.
The Globe recently hired a new Artistic Director, Emma Rice. Obviously, she’s been taking some new artistic liberties. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was the first play that Rice oversaw, so anyone would expect some little hiccups here and there. That is not what happened on stage. As with any play, there are critics and there are lovers. This is just merely my personal opinion on Rice's edition of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
The biggest problem I have with what we saw at The Globe was the appropriateness of the play—or lack thereof. When looking up The Globe’s comments on the play, they had mentioned on their website that it was appropriate for kids of all ages. I beg to differ. The play starts out innocently enough. But in the scene where Hermia and Lysander decide to elope, it starts to go downhill. They can’t keep their hands to themselves…and the rest of their bodies as well. It was slightly awkward to watch them practically going at it on stage while still having conversation. It was even more awkward that we had our professor’s younger daughter with us.
Then out came Puck. Puck was kind of funny at first, running around through the audience and squirting people with a water gun. Then she starts making out with random people in the crowd. It was odd the first time. It didn’t get any less odd as she continued on—even going as far as to somewhat suggestively eat a banana and then spit swap with the banana in her mouth. The rest of the banana was thrown into the crowd, where someone very triumphantly held it up as their prize souvenir.
It settled down for a bit, until Hermia and Lysander were hiking through the woods. As they were getting ready for bed, he stripped down to his underwear before trying to convince Hermia to have sex with him. She very obviously said no, but he persisted and persisted before finally accepting her answer. After they settled down to go to bed, Puck came out and had an up close inspection of Lysander‘s butt that threw us off just a bit. After Puck left, Lysander threw his sexual frustration at Helonus, trying to pressure him into having sex with him and again not understanding what “no” means the first few times he hears it. After they run off into the audience, Titania, the Elf Queen, awakens to fall in love with Nick Bottom, the Donkey-man (or Man-donkey). She also apparently has some sexual frustration as she immediately throws him onto her bed and then asks audience members for their help in undressing herself. She then strips to her underwear before hopping onto Nick’s lap and cutting to intermission. Having enough, we left at this point.
The second issue was the costumes. You would think that they would use traditional Victorian costumes. Such was not the case. It honestly wouldn’t have bothered me if they had been in modern clothing. Instead there was a mix between the two. Again, not too terribly bothersome. The problem ended up being how to Victorian costumes looked. On Titania, the entire front of her dress was cut away so it ended up looking less like a Victorian dress and more like a cheap knock off that they found in the “sexy” section of a Halloween store.
The Elves themselves were very questionable looking. They were wearing skin colored shirts to give the appearance that they were topless. Their Victorian style skirts had also been cut away in the front like the Titania’s. Also the fact that there were two guys wearing these costumes were just a little uncomfortable. The worst part was when they were dancing and some of the dance moves the girls did were uncomfortable and strange, so it was even worse with the guys. Additionally, the fact that on at least four separate occasions, somebody was stripped down to their tighty-whities. Did I mention that we had our professor’s young daughter with us? She spent a good majority of the play just looking down at the floor.
Everyone who has praised this rendition of a “Midsummer Night’s Dream” has done so saying that Shakespeare has been brought into the 21st century. But is this really the way we want to do “modernization”? Maybe the morals and values of the play were modernized, but not the actual play itself. I am by no means a die-hard Shakespearean, but even I thought that the play was a tad bit disrespectful and very distasteful. Maybe I’m stuck in Shakespeare’s time. But I don’t want to modernize if modernization means that love is nothing more than sex, “costumes” are little better than stripper’s clothes and nothing is funny if it’s not raunchy. What are we saying about ourselves and our society if this is what we put forward as our priorities? I’m a bit nervous for where our society is headed based on the “stunning, brilliant, and entertaining” performance I saw at The Globe.
