A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare Page B

clever quick change I decided not to have that at all and to try and look at them in their own right. I think that brought distinct advantages theatrically. One problem is that, when you get to the moment when Oberon and Titania are reconciled, which I think is an incredibly important moment in the play, then that moment becomes loaded with the practical issue of how you are going to do the quick change. When the fairies come back on right at the end of the play after Theseus and Hippolyta and the lovers have all gone off to bed, and there is a sense of the play coming to an end,I think not doubling the roles increases the audience’s sense of wonder and delight. There’s a growing sense of joy there, and I love the fact that Oberon and Titania do come back to enter the palace. The danger is that if Theseus and Hippolyta do another quick change you are more aware of the quick change than you are of the wonder of the moment. There’s a sense of benediction at the end of the play. It shows it clearly wasn’t just a dream after all. The fairies’ role has been reestablished as somehow preservers of the natural order and their benediction of the mothers and the newlyweds was somehow more special without the doubling.
    Supple: We did double Theseus with Oberon and Hippolyta with Titania as well as Philostrate with Puck. Even Egeus appears in the forest as a spirit. It seemed absolutely natural to do this on the page and it feels absolutely natural in performance. The reasons are numerous. The perfect structure of the play invites it: the mortal court disappears from view for the middle three acts, leaving its key actors idle if they are not to reappear as the spirit-court. Without this doubling, Theseus and Hippolyta have no process of change or travel: the doubling creates a rich physical and psychological experience at the heart of the play. The core meaning of the play lies in transformation and the forest is the place of change. The lovers transform with wild and released ferocity into sexual animals. Bottom of course transforms into the ultimate sexual beast—the compliant ass. Becoming Titania and Oberon is the transformation undergone by Hippolyta and Theseus. As the spirit-monarchs, they too are released from the restraining forces of civilized society. They can fight their way with no holds barred through the painful, turbulent forest of sexual jealousy, marital power, and mutual frustration. Like all classic folktales, the time and place of transformation is elsewhere and must be forgotten to the conscious mind. Bottom cannot hold on to the memory of his experience in the forest, nor can the lovers. How much more rich is this sense of dream if it is common to all the characters in the play? Hippolyta and Theseus’ dream is to have been Titania and Oberon. This makes the stage one and binds the audience into a sensation of dream: “That you have but slumbered here / While these visions didappear.” What losses there might be is hard to guess at—one would have to play the play the other way to discover. The most obvious loss would be a greater sense of concrete, discreet character in each mortal and each immortal. One might gain a sense of travel—of leaving the court, the city, and entering another, very different world. It would allow extreme differences in casting. One could even play with the two worlds colliding more often. Indeed we can surmise that in Shakespeare’s time the mechanicals doubled with the fairies. This completes the dream, the surrealism of the mortal world becoming the immortal world. However, we definitely wanted mechanicals who would bring a reality to the stage and who would convince as workingmen from India’s streets. This demanded a very different kind of performer and physical personality to those we cast as fairies. Having two different groups produced a vivid contrast between them and created a rich human canvas. It also allowed two