A Midsummer Night's Dream
So, it turns out, when you take A Midsummer Night's Dream and remove all the good parts, the lovers can actually be pretty funny after all.
By "all the good parts" I mean the play within a play, all of the court scenes, virtually everything with the mechanicals, and all of the dialogue. Because you made it a single-setting (forest) ballet. Which somehow managed to fit in the whole Mendelsson score, even the bits of it that corresponded to scenes that weren't in the show.
The result was actually very much enjoyable. The lovers, usually the least interesting part of Midsummer's, were phenomenal. Especially, of all people, Helena. She ended up as a cross between a Punch and Judy puppet, Raggety Ann, and Ado Annie. It was brilliant. The lovers were also Color-Coded For Our Convenience, which always helps, and they were basically slap-stick. If the Three Stooges did ballet, this is about what it would look like. And I quite like all the dancers who were cast in the rolls. Hermia was the tall, blonde, and cold-as-ice dancer, which actually worked with her more serious role - and Lysander was her standard opposite dancer, so they worked very well together. Helena was shorter and darker and all grin and giggles, and played by a dancer who is wonderful in goofy roles and not my favorite otherwise. I objected to the casting at first, because Helena should be taller and blonder, and Hermia should be smaller and darker - but with no actual text that mattered not at all, and the personalities worked out a lot better this way.
They also switched up the ending a bit. Titania ended up surrendering the changeling of her own free will, apparently out of guilt for having cheated on Oberon, rather than him stealing it while she's (ahem) otherwise occupied. I think I liked that variation - although it doesn't make Oberon any less of a jerk.
I missed the mechanicals. There were only two other mechanicals, rather than four, and they had about half of one scene. On the other hand, it was enough to get "The Entrance of the Mechanicals" into the score, which pleased me greatly (yay! Bassoons!). There were a few WTFs in the music, but since it involved incorporating music that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten to hear, I didn't object too much. For instance, the Funeral March (one of my very favorite bits) got reappropriated as Bottom's Theme (because it hath no bottom?) And they just threw in the Bergomask as a random solo dance number for Bottom once he became de-ensorcelled, presumably because it's too much fun to omit outright. But they left the two pieces with actually lyrics in and intact, which rather surprised me. Even more so because dancing didn't seem to relate to the lyrics at all. The lullaby was the worse offender, especially the ending with "one aloof stand sentinel"...or not, as the case turned out to be. But again, I love the Mendelsson score, and I don't think anybody else there was familiar enough with it to notice its slight rearrangement to match the rearrangement of the storyline.
All in all, it was a blast - and a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I still think the Indian production is my favorite Midsummers, but I think these were definitely the best Lovers I've ever seen, possibly because so much more attention was on them than there usually is. Huzzah for ballet, and huzzah for Midsummers in February! And doubly appropriate since Felix Mendelsson's birthday was just the other day.
By "all the good parts" I mean the play within a play, all of the court scenes, virtually everything with the mechanicals, and all of the dialogue. Because you made it a single-setting (forest) ballet. Which somehow managed to fit in the whole Mendelsson score, even the bits of it that corresponded to scenes that weren't in the show.
The result was actually very much enjoyable. The lovers, usually the least interesting part of Midsummer's, were phenomenal. Especially, of all people, Helena. She ended up as a cross between a Punch and Judy puppet, Raggety Ann, and Ado Annie. It was brilliant. The lovers were also Color-Coded For Our Convenience, which always helps, and they were basically slap-stick. If the Three Stooges did ballet, this is about what it would look like. And I quite like all the dancers who were cast in the rolls. Hermia was the tall, blonde, and cold-as-ice dancer, which actually worked with her more serious role - and Lysander was her standard opposite dancer, so they worked very well together. Helena was shorter and darker and all grin and giggles, and played by a dancer who is wonderful in goofy roles and not my favorite otherwise. I objected to the casting at first, because Helena should be taller and blonder, and Hermia should be smaller and darker - but with no actual text that mattered not at all, and the personalities worked out a lot better this way.
They also switched up the ending a bit. Titania ended up surrendering the changeling of her own free will, apparently out of guilt for having cheated on Oberon, rather than him stealing it while she's (ahem) otherwise occupied. I think I liked that variation - although it doesn't make Oberon any less of a jerk.
I missed the mechanicals. There were only two other mechanicals, rather than four, and they had about half of one scene. On the other hand, it was enough to get "The Entrance of the Mechanicals" into the score, which pleased me greatly (yay! Bassoons!). There were a few WTFs in the music, but since it involved incorporating music that we otherwise wouldn't have gotten to hear, I didn't object too much. For instance, the Funeral March (one of my very favorite bits) got reappropriated as Bottom's Theme (because it hath no bottom?) And they just threw in the Bergomask as a random solo dance number for Bottom once he became de-ensorcelled, presumably because it's too much fun to omit outright. But they left the two pieces with actually lyrics in and intact, which rather surprised me. Even more so because dancing didn't seem to relate to the lyrics at all. The lullaby was the worse offender, especially the ending with "one aloof stand sentinel"...or not, as the case turned out to be. But again, I love the Mendelsson score, and I don't think anybody else there was familiar enough with it to notice its slight rearrangement to match the rearrangement of the storyline.
All in all, it was a blast - and a lot more fun than I expected it to be. I still think the Indian production is my favorite Midsummers, but I think these were definitely the best Lovers I've ever seen, possibly because so much more attention was on them than there usually is. Huzzah for ballet, and huzzah for Midsummers in February! And doubly appropriate since Felix Mendelsson's birthday was just the other day.