As part of their 80th anniversary celebration and as a precursor of the International Festival in Tbilisi next year, the Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre invited directors, dramaturgs and producers from Israel, Romania, and London to come and see their work. I was lucky enough to attend this theatre festival as representative of the Soho Theatre London.
The presentations opened with a new adaptation of the Shakespeare classic A Midsummer Night’s Dream by the Marjanishvili’s Artistic Director Levan Tsuladze. Tsuladze’s vision of the play is a pink and white extravaganza dominated by the development of a gay relationship between Oberon and Puck. The fairies, dressed in skimpish ballet dresses, inspired by Art Nouveau design, are representative of a Victorian prettification which culminates in an extravagant Botticelli pastiche when Titania emerges from a giant mussel.
The acting generally betrays the Georgian predilection for the grand old English style a la Olivier, which would appear to a modern London audience as heightened and bordering on the melodramatic. However, Tsuladze’s direction is not completely void of postmodern impulses. Some of the large theatrical gestures are ironically undercut, for example when Oberon calls thunder and lightning upon a character and is then surprised by the immediate effect of his gesture.
The use of space is often uninspired. Most monologues are expectedly delivered to the audience from the front of the stage, and during Theseus’ and Egeus’ negotiation of Hermia’s relationship with Lysander, all participants limply stand in a single line.
This lack of thorough thinking is unfortunately indicative of the rest of the performance. Many ideas and situations are created without following them through to their end. The only possible exception is the introduction of a female Snug (Nika Kuchava) into the group of mechanicals. Snug’s insistence on a part in the play they are going to enact for Theseus’ and Hippolyta’s wedding, reinforced as it is by Kuchava’s boisterous impersonation, is suddenly imbued with feminist implications. Unfortunately, even this potential female empowerment leads to a dead end when Snug is ready to settle for the minor part of the lion.
The production becomes a meandering plot that lacks a clear thrust. Attempts are made to fill this intellectual emptiness with music that does little else than reinforce the desired (and obvious) emotions of a scene. The production fails to rise beyond a titillating Disneyfication of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I left at the interval in order to attend a rather different performance.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream was performed at the Kote Marjanishvili State Drama Theatre Tbilisi, large stage on 22/11/08.
Read the first part of Jens Peters’ Georgia Series: The Rendezvous.
