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Alexander Morfov >> works >> theatre productions >> A Midsummer Night's Dream | Komissarzhevskaya Th...
A Midsummer Night's Dream
V. F. Komissarzhevskoy Theatre
St. Petersburg, Russia
premiere 3 April 2007, Main stage
Author
Director and musical
decisions
Set design
Costumes design
Light design
Musical manager
Duration
Cast:
William Shakespeare
Alexander Morfov
Tino Svetozarev
Nika Velegzhaninova
Sergey Andriyashin
Arthur Mkrtchyan
200 min., with intermission
Alexander Bolshakov, Olga Arikova/ Oksana Baziliewich, Yuriy Ershov, Anatoly Gorin, Anna Vartanyan, Evgenia Igumnova, Rodion Prihodko, Evgeniy Ivanov;
Athenian citizens: Sergey Byzgu, Margarita Bychkova, Denis Pyanov, Ivan Vassilyev, Vladimir Krylov, Ivan Batarev, Egor Bakulin, Alexander Bolshakov, Olga Arikova/ Oksana Baziliewich, Yuriy Ershov, Alexandra Sydoruk, Alexandr Ganelin, Alexandr Anisimov
A feature peculiar to Shakespeare is the suddenness of love. There is mutual fascination and infatuation from the very first glance, the first touch of hands. Love falls down like a hawk; the world has ceased to exist; the lovers only see each other. Love in Shakespeare fills the entire being with rapture and desire. All that is left in the Dream of these amorous passions is the suddenness of desire... Commentators have long noticed that the lovers in this quartet are hardly distinguishable from one another. The girls differ only in height and the colour of their hair... The boys differ only in names. All four lack the distinctness and uniqueness of so many other, even earlier, Shakespearian characters. The lovers are exchangeable...The entire action of this hot night, everything that has happened at this drunken party, is based on the complete exchangebility of love partners.
~ Jan Kott,“Titania and the Ass’s Head”
A Midsummer Night's Dream:
about feelings impossible to buy
about love in all of its manifestations - from somber bliss to uncontrollable passion and insanity
about the actors who never notice Gods - laughing at them
about their selfless, neverending and touching devotion to theatre
about the most ridiculous passion of all - theatre - the only dream
impossbile to forget and the only sense impossible to replace.
Two young men - Lysander and Demetrius, compete for the hand of one of the most beautiful girls in Athens, Hermia. Hermia is in love with Lysander but her father forbids such a marriage and the two lovers decide to elope from Athens in order to get married. Helena, who is in love with Demetrius, lets him know of the planned elopement. He rushes after them, while Helena rushes after Demetrius. In the somber forest magical and fairy metamorphoses occur: the forest spirit Puck casts a spell on Queen Titania and she falls in love with an ass; he confuses the lovers and makes them chaotically jump from one object of adoration to another. Meanwhile, a group of Athenian craftsmen are rehearsing a play in the forest to celebrate the marriage between Theseus, Duke of Athens, and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. The rehearsals keep being interrupted by the lovers in pursuit of each other. But there is no suffering in the kingdom of the elves, and the mischievous Puck transforms all that happened into a mere dream.
TOURS & AWARDS:
Presented at the International Theatre Festival "Butrint" - Butrint, Albania, 2010
Presented at the International "Ohrid Summer" Festival - Ohrid, Macedonia, 2010
Presented at the Bitola Cultural Summer - Bitola, Macedonia, 2010
Presented at the XV-th International Winter Festival of Arts - St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014
"The Golden Soffit" theatre award, St. Petersburg, Russia, season 2006-2007 - Best Theatre Company in a Drama Theatre
REVIEWS:
"In Morfov's production the roles of Theseus and Oberon are performed by the same actor - Alexander Bolshakov - an actor with the image of a thug, a man-beast, in the sense that in his roles instinct is what drives and programmes actions. He is as if born with the clean-shaven skull and the tuxedo and, of course, it would be amusing if such a character suddenly began extolling power but it's strange how the Bulgarian director Morfov sank into Russian political games. His work is a commentary on the modern world as a whole - what is now rotten and what has preserved some freshness."
Nightmares in the Magical Forest | Zhanna Zaretskaya, Vecherniy Peterburg, 23.04.2007
More:
In "A Midsummer Night's Dream" the Clowns Outplayed the Actors | Elena Gerusova, Force-major, 11.04.2007
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