Based on the Shakespeare play of the same name, Queensland Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a story of misdirected love, quarrels and confusion, but with a happy ending. As the result of a quarrel between Titania and Oberon, Queen and King of the Fairies, Oberon arranges for his servant Puck to bewitch Titania with a magic flower. This causes her to fall in love with the first creature she sees.
Helena, Hermia, Demetrius and Lysander are gentlemen and gentlewomen explorers of the forest where the fairies live. Helena loves Demetrius, who loves Hermia, who loves Lysander. Oberon and Puck try to remedy the mismatches by bewitching Demetrius to love Helena. However, the confusion worsens when Lysander is also bewitched.
Also in the forest are a group of rustics, young male yokels on a camping trip. One of these is Bottom, whom Puck has turned into a donkey, and Titania falls in love with him. By the end of the ballet, all the mixups are resolved happily.
This version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was choreographed by Liam Scarlett in a joint production for Royal New Zealand Ballet and Queensland Ballet, and previously performed by Queensland Ballet in 2016 and again in 2018. A high-profile British choreographer, Scarlett was formerly Artistic Associate with the company.
The movement is intricate and rapid for most of the characters, with frequent changes in direction, reflecting their relationship confusions. In contrast, the choreography for Oberon is elegant, flowing, and with longer, more powerful lines. The choreography for Titania is also flowing, but gentler, with quicksilver moments. Their two main pas de deux, particularly the one near the close of the ballet, are lovely, with floating lifts and many moments of tenderness.
The gormless rustics, in a stereotyped portrayal of the lower orders, have a lot of marching-based movements and ‘silly walks’.
Lucy Green was a radiant Titania, her strong presence balanced against Joel Woellner’s commanding Oberon, who has awe-inspiring gravitas and an unsettling propensity to materialise in the shadows, watching the other characters.
Kohei Iwamoto, as the mischievous and impulsive Puck zoomed and fizzed around the stage like a firecracker. Bottom was engagingly played by Rian Thompson, both in his donkey persona (and enthusiastic swain for Titania), and as the greedy outsider in the band of rustics, always with his bag of snacks.
Chiara Gonzalez as Hermia and Alexander Idaszak as Lysander portrayed an appealing pair of lovers. Idaszak was very convincing in Lysander’s complete change in persona when bewitched. Vito Bernasconi as Demetrius was a very different character: dashing and confident, but also downcast by his unrequited love for Hermia, and disconcerted by Helena’s bold advances. Georgia Swan as Helena was the stereotypical plain girl with glasses and her hair in two childish plaits. She made the most of the comedy of her role.
All the fairies were beguiling, mischievous, untamed creatures, especially the lead four: Mustard Seed (Laura Tosar), Moth (Isabella Swietlicki), Peaseblossom (Sophie Zoricic) and Cobweb (Paige Rochester).
The ballet is set at night, in a forest. Costume and Set Designer Tracy Grant Lord and Lighting Designer Kendall Smith have created a dark, enchanted world, with glowing plants, giant flowerbuds, vine-draped trees and a starry night backdrop. The lighting clearly shows the dancers while keeping the forest gloom around the edges of the set.
Titania wears an exquisite, sparkling dress of very pale blue chiffon. Oberon and Puck, master and servant, are in dark, glittery blue: Oberon majestic in a suit-like costume with frock coat; and Puck with transparent top, wings and an impish headdress. The fairies are in bright purple-blue feathery dresses, those for the four lead fairies varying in colours of bodices and underskirts.
The music, by Felix Mendelssohn, is arranged by Queensland Ballet Music Director and Principal Conductor Nigel Gaynor, and played by Camerata, Queensland's Chamber Orchestra. It incorporates Mendelssohn’s incidental music for the Shakespeare play, supplemented with some of his other compositions. The music shimmers, beautifully evoking a fairytale world.
Taken at face value, this ballet is visually and aurally beautiful, comic and moving. On closer inspection, it is an uneasy mix of slapstick comedy and fairytale children’s ballet, and a dark and unsettling adult drama.
The published program recommends A Midsummer Night’s Dream for audiences aged 13 and over, as it contains drug and sexual references. The sexual references are certainly obvious, with Titania and Bottom besotted with each other and twice retiring to her boudoir, and the two pairs of lovers disappearing and reappearing from their tents.
The plot doesn’t stand up well to close scrutiny today, although the depiction of male control and ownership of women in Shakespeare’s play is toned down. However, Oberon’s conduct is appalling by today’s standards: to humiliate his wife, he has her bewitched with a drug while she is asleep, leading her to have a sexual relationship with a donkey.
Oberon and Titania’s quarrel was over ‘possession’ (the word used in the program synopsis) of a changeling boy (Oscar Ziolek) — that is, a stolen child. The concept of stealing a child is horrifying. I’m sure many other reasons could have been found for a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, and the changeling not included in a 21st century ballet.
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