Review: Footsbarn's Midsummer Night's Dream, Victoria Park

Written for Culture Wars

So otherworldly is Footsbarn’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, that it conjures thoughts of another dimension altogether. Two dimensions to be precise, for it has all the qualities of a BBC animated adaptation aimed at schools: low-tech, low-brow and lowly. Larger than life yet utterly without boldness, theirs is a homespun Dream simply told; its eye firmly fixed upon the groundlings. In stubbornly refusing to engage intellect or emotions, it proves an evening to surpass “the bounds of maidens’ patience.”

Footsbarn are a travelling theatre company approaching forty years of madcap, populist performance and not seen on these shores in a quarter century. Accordingly, for all the shortcomings of the drama itself, there is a quaint charm at play. Underneath their masks, Footsbarn’s players become intriguing specimens, a throwback to simple, roaming antiquity. They live entirely for performance. While their big-top, erected in a clearing in Victoria Park, promises a dark, eerie magic, Footsbarn exude warmth, generosity and a fondness for the people of the world.

Sadly, all the goodness of spirit in the world cannot elevate their makeshift Midsummer Night’s Dream, which increasingly grates as it fades from mirth to monotony. Footsbarn display little faith in the play itself, overburdening it to breaking point with convoluted additions, slapstick clowning routines and bizarre character choices.

Lysander and Demitrius (Paddy Hayter and Vincent Gracieux) are so aged that they more closely resemble a pair of Richard IIIs than young lovers. As such, their joint pursuit of Hermia (a sweet Caroline Piette) and Helena (Muriel Piquart) takes on a perturbing quality of unwanted attention. As Titania, Akemi Yamauchi moves with an airy elegance but is utterly incomprehensible when tackling the text, while Mas Soegeng’s Puck is a force of aggravation, as he squeals pig-like throughout.

The mechanicals fair little better. Overplayed and under-thought, they finally produce a pageant-like Pyrramus and Thisbe of surprising sophistication but little laughter. It is left to the delightful Piquart, a marvellous clown possessed of remarkable stillness, to garner any form of original comedy as she springs into Helena’s broad emotional extremes.

Footsbarn’s Dream might serve as an easy introduction for the uninitiated, but in harking back to a time before directorial vision and literary interpretation it offers little more than a glimpse of curious antiquity.