A Midsummer Night’s Dream (review)

Colette Gordon

Shakespeare Bulletin, Volume 30, Number 4, Winter 2012, pp. 543-547

(Review)

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/shb.2012.0090

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/495106

[ Access provided at 3 Jun 2023 20:34 GMT from Wuhan University ]

 theatre rehearsal reviews 543

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Presented by Abrahamse and Meyer Productions at the Artscape The-
atre, Cape Town. April 10—25, 2012. Direction and Set Design by Fred
Abrahamse. Costumes by Marcel Meyer. Lighting by Fahiem Bardien.
Sound by Charl-Johan Lingenfelder. With Marcel Meyer (Theseus/Oberon),
Chi Mhende (Hippolyta/Titania) Nicholas Andrews (Puck), Sizwe Msutu
(Egeus), Zondwa Njokweni (Hermia), James Macgregor (Lysander), Anelisa
Phewa (Demetrius), Hanna Borthwick (Helena), David Dennis (Bottom),
Luthando Mthi (Quince), Mdu Kweyama (Flute), Sipho Vara (Snout) and
Malafane Moshuli (Snug).

Colette Gordon, University of the Witwatersrand

On 25 March, I joined Fred Abrahamse and company at the Artscape

theatre complex to observe rehearsals for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Rehearsals were located high and deep inside the massive brutalist com-
plex originally built by the Apartheid state to accommodate its performing
arts parastatal1 and large state-sponsored spectacles. The actors had been
given a space the size of the opera stage in which to work, a “rehearsal
room” for choruses and corps de ballet. Abrahamse and Meyer Productions
(the director and his commercial partner) have in recent years carved out a
niche in South Africa with Shakespeare scaled small for touring to schools
and festivals. The last time the company performed at Artscape, their
three-handed Richard III played to scattered audiences in the complex’s
jerry-built side-of-theatre conversion. Now they were preparing to open
on the main stage with a cast of fourteen. The rehearsal room presented
a concrete and constant reminder of the problem of filling the physical
and cultural space represented by the main stage.
Given this space, the rehearsal was casual, but not intimate. Half of
the cast were present, rehearsing scenes involving the Athenian nobles: a
development from small rehearsal work on “the lovers,” In the large room,
and with the actors now rehearsing full scenes, focus and energy seemed
to dissipate easily. When focus shifted from full ensemble to individual
couples, actors accustomed to sustained, focused work with one or two
others, drifted about “offstage” in corners. At very few moments did the
restive actors grow still. These rare moments of collective attentiveness
marked key points in the rehearsal process. By this rehearsal, the actors
already had their blocking; and the session aimed to allow them to shrug
off patterns that had become fixed and stilted, while setting down the
overall shape of the group scenes (which here included two pieces of
silent choreography: a wedding and a dumbshow). These aims pulled in
544 shakespeare bulletin

opposite directions, making the rehearsal a little schizophrenic. But, in a

couple of cases, changes to blocking and the relationship between bodies
in the couples, produced effects that extended over the whole rehearsal.
Unusually, there were two observers present. Before starting work on
the scenes, the actors were required to run through them for the project’s
sound designer. This “run through” meant a slow, unfocused start for the
actors, but it afforded a useful opportunity to see the production concept
framed. While the actors took a break, the director conferred with the
composer. This was a difficult discussion, and the only time where I felt
the director might be uncomfortable with my presence in the rehearsal.
It was evident, even with minimal stage properties, that the company
was taking Shakespeare on Safari. Setting Midsummer Night’s Dream in
a game park allowed the company to locate a fantasy space of animistic,
mystical Africa cheek by jowl with the reality of commercial tourism. The
game lodge, it seemed, was thus a neat (and neatly ironized) substitution
for Athens and its wild, fantastical woods. But Abrahamse clearly wanted
to preserve, rather than ironize, the fantasy vision of Africa, to extend it
over the whole production, raising the question of the colonial fantasy
preserved in a white Theseus’ lordship over the estate (not to mention a
black Hippolyta). While I scrutinized the production’s publicity poster
(a Zebra’s head featured prominently) and props (a Livingstone hat and
animal skins), Abrahamse attempted to achieve consensus that the com-
poser’s score would evoke Africa in a new idiom, without using African
music. But the composer seemed surprised, then frustrated, unable to
see why or how one would render a fantasy vision of Africa for audi-
ences effectively without standard points of musical reference. He left,
disconcerted, with these questions still unresolved. At stake, presumably,
was the creation of a fantasy of Africa unsullied by use or by association
with exploitation.
The director had better success in directing his actors: the problems
of defining a “vision” in negative and general terms largely fell away as
he worked, intuitively, with his actors on specific decisions—though
core issues did surface. With the composer’s departure, the rehearsal
began in earnest, starting with the first contact and exchange between
Theseus and Hippolyta. Abrahamse shifted the dynamic between actors,
by changing their placement in relation to each other. The actors, who
had first played the scene at arms length, were brought into an embrace,
after Abrahamse had pressed the actor playing Theseus to consider the
sexual urgency in his speech. This clarified the scene, giving a visual
context for the language. It did not purge the actor’s delivery of stilted-
 theatre rehearsal reviews 545

ness, however, but risked making it more visible, when the declamatory
vocal tone carried over, unconvincingly, into the new physical position
of intimacy, so that Theseus appeared to be talking over or through his
queen. The exchange also lost, for this session, part of the tension that
had initially struck me and seemed to hold the attention of the room:
tension built up in Hippolyta’s measured performance of ritual gestures
(suggesting moon worship), focused by the interruption of Theseus’s
entry, and then played out in the conflict between her slow, deliberate
grace and the blithely hectoring style of the Shakespearean actor in big
colonialist boots. In their first encounter the couple seemed balanced,
with Hippolyta’s power expressed in her fine control of physical distance
and regal gesture. Reducing that distance and that movement effectively
reduced her. Taking the captive queen in his arms, Theseus overwhelmed
Hippolyta both physically and stylistically.
The decision to present Hippolyta as Theseus’ African queen created
a difficult task for the actress. Laboring under a heavy accent, she was
directed to speak out, dropping the vocal character, at the same time that
she was urged to be less “western” in her acting and find the “natural”
movements she had used before. I noticed that in addition to this nega-
tive direction, Abrahamse offered visual examples from film, seeming to
depend here and elsewhere on the black actress’ body to generate exoti-
cism, whereas the actress sought to develop a character, and evoke a sense
of Africanness that went beyond the body.
The second exchange between lovers, Hermia and Lysander, was also
directed to produced an increase in intimacy, but from more interesting
causes and with more interesting results. As the ensemble rehearsed the
Athenian’s petitioning of the Duke, my attention was drawn to the ac-
tress playing Hermia. Zondwa Njokweni made a striking figure, tiny and
tracksuited, balancing improbably on a pair of red platform stilettos that
were clearly intended to be a key part of her wardrobe ( James Macgregor’s
Lysander labored, less conspicuously, in a heavy skirt). While they re-
hearsed the scene, Njowkeni kept shifting her delivery, as though aware
that her lines weren’t working, shuttling effectively between sassy and
sulky in an effort to play the comedy. Abrahamse addressed this problem
when they came to Hermia’s exchange with Theseus, suggesting that
Hermia would be less “brattish” in the face of the Duke’s rank and power.
Status was a recurrent theme in this rehearsal. It also slowly emerged
as a lynchpin of the production, replacing questions of race while the
company flirted with the colonial fantasia of the luxury game park. Setting
Dream at a game lodge offers to foreground the performance of “Africa”
546 shakespeare bulletin

as a fantasy, “put on” as much by the staff in their day-to-day business

as in the obvious tourist spectacle, UPyramus no Thisbe. For this double
vision to work, the audience would need to see the estate employees
(played by black actors) as occupying specific professional roles, not a
position of general (racialized) subservience. But the casting of a white
Theseus as the estate owner made it easy to forget this—easy also, I
thought, to remember how the legacy of colonialism continues in 2012,
well into democratic South Africa’s eighteenth year. Thus the Director
could be seen taking special pains to ensure that Marcel Meyer’s Theseus
received Sizwe Msutu’s Egeus with due respect at the beginning of the
scene. The Duke could not forget the “value” of the “community leader,”
presumably for fear of producing for audiences a spectacle of naturalized
colonial race relations.
Emphasizing status, this rehearsal was silent about the dynamics of
patriarchy and the clear violence threatened to Egeus’s daughter: “a form
in wax / By him imprinted and within his power / To leave the figure
or disfigure it.” As these lines were revised, all the focus was on shift-
ing the actor’s stress from nouns to verbs. But for a woman standing on
six-inch heels, the physical force of simple stage business, like Egeus
taking her hand and planting it in Demetrius’s, was amplified. Physical
movement gave the actress little outlet for expression. Directed to throw
herself at Theseus’ feet, Njokweni could only manage, within safety, a
stiff curtseying of the knees. Repeated performances of the submissive
gesture brought new shades of emotion to her face, but her movements
remained of force somewhat controlled and stiff, matching her lines.
Her performance became if anything more wooden, shades of adolescent
spunk and sulkiness hardening into dull sullenness.
As the cast took their exits, leaving Hermia to finish the scene with
Lysander, the actress stopped the rehearsal, expressing her dissatisfaction
and asking the director how she was supposed to play the scene. At this
point, she became tearful. Pushing back successive waves of tears, she
explained that she could not play this scene as comedy. “It’s horrible.”
Abrahamse reassured her that this was a positive development, a “break-
through.” He directed her to “just go with it” and the company played the
scene again from Egeus’ entrance, with absolute concentration. Njokweni
remained tearful as the party made their exit; her performance still seemed
awkward and out of place. But when the scene moved on to Lysander
comforting Hermia, her performance gained ground. Lysander’s intense
focus on Hermia had barely registered with her earlier, but now the actors
drew energy from each other. At the moment in which they positioned
themselves back to back for the set piece (“The course of true love never
 theatre rehearsal reviews 547

did run smooth”), Abrahamse stopped the actors and asked them to
jettison the blocking as something that had “[come] out of a different
space.” As the actors abandoned the physical script and listened to each
other for cues, the stichomythia that had constituted a readymade comic
set piece became a real exchange, producing a change in both characters.
Hermia grew in confidence, pouncing on Lysander’s lines, and she pulled
away from him to give fuller vent to her frustration. Her rising spirits
allowed Lysander to relax his solicitous gaze and express his own disap-
pointment and frustration. Side by side in dejected solidarity, occasionally
rising to a passionate outburst, the pair looked more like dejected fans
commiserating after a bad sports match than cross(ed) lovers. There was
a new sense that the losers had been left behind in the scene, rather than
left to their own (quaint) devices. They appeared far from easy in the
abandoned space, but easy with each other. The bond between them ap-
peared stronger while their happiness seemed more vulnerable.
This rehearsal produced an unlikely “breakthrough.” The outcome was
both interesting and significant for the development of the production. A
question exists of how far an observer’s presence might itself engender this
kind of scene, exacerbating feelings of frustration and exposure in vulner-
able actors, prompted to fit their chagrin to a script like the breakthrough.
The writing process also unavoidably has an impact on the rehearsal
process as it becomes something written and formally recorded. Overall,
the rehearsal presented a myriad of successful choices, which occupied
the greatest part of my notes, but fell away in writing this report. These
directorial choices show success finally in their unremarkableness, the
machinery of rehearsal, like most machinery, becoming invisible when
it functions. As I reflected on the rehearsal, moments tainted with risk,
failure, or incompleteness retained a clearer image, and came into sharper
focus after the event, whereas the successes became diminished. Finally,
the rehearsal highlighted moments of difficulty, vulnerability, and loss
that were put away in performance.

Note
1
Parastatal organizations, especially in the African continent, are legal enti-
ties created by governments to undertake infrastructural, commercial or cultural
activities on behalf of the government. They have some political authority and
serve the state indirectly, relating to quasi autonomous nongovernmental orga-
nizations (or quangos) in a European context.