[McQueen-Thomson reviews the Bell Shakespeare Company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Elke Neidhardt, arguing that the play's “unrelieved austerity and frostiness” produced a “tired disjointedness rather than original coherence.”]

What kind of grim pessimism drives designers these days into drab colour schemes of grey and silver? Whatever the answer, the Bell Shakespeare Company's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was cold, sterile and very grey. Often imagined as a play about enchantment and wondrous fantasy, this production instead presented a bleak, unsettling dream. Too monotone and inconsistent, this interpretation failed to captivate.

The burden of Peter Brook's famous 1970 nightmare-inspired production of A Midsummer Night's Dream obviously weighed heavily on director Elke Neidhardt. The program notes refer often to Brook, and Neidhardt mentions having seen his production herself. And like Brook, Neidhardt opted for unrelieved austerity and frostiness. Her set consisted of metal mesh panels joined together in a cage-like form and several perspex boxes. Blue and white lighting, with regular doses of dry ice, created an unvarying, chill atmosphere more suited to winter than midsummer. This is a long way from the overblown exoticism of Michael Hoffman's 1999 star-studded (but awful) film of the play, and from the colourful energy and vitality of the Royal Shakespeare Company's excellent production which toured Australia in 1997.

This set was effective in the play's opening scenes, with Athens portrayed as a severe, almost totalitarian state run by rule of force. However, the austere atmosphere did not vary as the play moved into the forest, and became completely inappropriate during the raucous antics of the ‘hempen homespuns’; the base humour of Bottom and his band of craftsmen was dulled by this cool, abstract dreamscape. Neidhardt takes the play's Athenian setting literally, adding distracting gimmicks such as Greek flags, ‘Zorba the Greek’ music, and sporadic Greek accents. In Neidhardt's Greece, order is maintained via a patriarchal regime of sexual violence: Theseus, clad in leather codpiece and suit, sadistically keeps his fiance Hippolyta restrained with a dog-collar and leash; Demetrius threatens the infatuated Helena with rape and worse; Oberon takes perverse pleasure in his wife Titania's bestial relations with Bottom. This produces a provocative, though disjointed, examination of sexual abuse and misogyny. Despite this emphasis on sexual subjection, the production marketed itself as ‘the most erotic of Shakespeare's plays’. Combined with a publicity poster image of a naked female curled into a ball, this makes for a disturbing view of eroticism. Marketing really should match the message of the play, and not just titillate.

Unfortunately, the impact of this production's examination of gender politics was lessened by its use of modern Greek machismo. This framing device provided an obvious rationale for Theseus and Oberon's patriarchal desires. However, as an explanation it is too simple, and reduces characters to their cultural contexts. These sexual violations became less unsettling than they should have been, with audience members likely to have felt distanced from them.

The strongest feature of this dark interpretation was Frank Whitten's performance as Puck. In stained overcoat and dark eyeshadow, Whitten's lanky Puck was the malevolent force behind the play's unnatural transformations—a vindictive controller of dreams akin to Freddy Kreuger. With Gothic style, Puck skulked about the stage as he announced gleefully that he would ‘mislead night-wanderers, laughing at their harm’. In his epilogue, Puck claims that either he is honest and harmony will be restored, or else he should be called a liar. Neidhardt leaves no doubt that Puck is as untrustworthy as he is pernicious, and that the play's final happiness will not endure.

Strong performances were also produced by the four young lovers, with Wadih Dona's proud Demetrius and Marta Dusseldorp's madly besotted Helena both standing out. Jeanette Cronin was a striking silver presence as Titania. However, characterisation was never allowed to bloom sufficiently within the confines of frigid set design.

Now celebrating its tenth year, the Bell Shakespeare Company's achievement has been to establish a distinctive contemporary Australian approach to Shakespeare which is perhaps best described as bold eclecticism. Without the hindrance of old world performance traditions, they characteristically engage directly with messy cultural collisions and mixtures. Unfortunately, this production's boldness produced tired disjointedness rather than original coherence, and the final result was a variable, disturbing dream.