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Slow waves of sound like deep breathing open Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. Is this Bottom’s dream? Perhaps. Certainly Judith Bowden’s abstract floating set and Cameron Davis's projections put us in a dream world. Lights like stars envelope the audience and the stage and searching fairies slip down the aisles, glowing orbs in their hands. It is a beguiling production.

The fairy chorus, all boys, plunges straight into the world of the wood with “Over hill, over dale”, Shakespeare’s words being redistributed amongst the chorus. The dramatic text is severely cut. Britten set almost the whole opera in the forest, eliminating Act I altogether. The general structure and the words remain and it is one of the wonders of this work that Britten could take a dramatic, poetic text replete with a dazzling array of changes in metre, rhyme and prose and turn it into complex, operatic, inventive music without losing the feel of the original.

Suzanne Rigden was forceful and regal as Tytania. Diamond-sharp coloratura glittered like the stars on her magnificent cloak. If she over-powered Oberon in the opening quarrel, it made his vexation the stronger. They were well-balanced in the subsequent quarrel, both trading off accusations with equal vehemence. The dark side of Oberon’s vindictiveness was not minimized by Britten or by David Trudgen whose beautiful counter-tenor was disquieting and other-worldly. In contrast, his aria “I know a bank where the wild thyme grows” was inexpressibly sweet.

Adam Fisher (a very likeable Lysander) and John Brancy (a dashing Demetrius) handled Britten’s score with unaffected ease. Betty Waynne Allison (Helena) has a lively and bold soprano, nicely modified to confusion when the bewitched young men both madly court her. Lauren Segal (Hermia), smaller in stature than Helena as per the text, has a voice as rich as Allison’s, warm and round, complemented by excellent acting. During the fight scene all four hared around the stage like musical theatre performers, never missing a note or a beat, to hilarious effect. In the beautiful quartet when the lovers wake up from their night in the woods, they were delicate and wondering.

Not out of this world like the Fairy kingdom, nor out of their minds like the lovers, the Rustics have their own imaginative adventure - they are putting on a play. Shakespeare has great fun with this, mocking amateur acting and contemporary drama, including his own Romeo and Juliet. Britten laughs at professional singers and bel canto opera. Laurence Williford, temperate as Flute, was a priceless Thisbe warbling with bravura through his florid death scene. Brian Bannatyne-Scott was a similarly understated Bottom, but as Pyramus his warm and plummy tones were very satisfying and 19th-century. Restraint served him well in the wondering “I have had a most rare dream.”

And finally Puck, a non-singing role (well, almost. Ellis was very good at mimicking the singing voices of both Demetrius and Lysander) but as central to the opera as he is in Shakespeare. Daniel Ellis is a dancing forest spirit, impish, wild and altogether enchanting. Director Tom Diamond makes it clear that Oberon wants the little Indian boy in order to replace Puck (a shattered Ellis) but ultimately this little plot twist goes nowhere. Otherwise, Diamond's direction is straightforward, though he barely used the pair of elevated platforms at the front of the stage while Tytania's "flowery bed" was so far downstage it felt remote from the audience.

IThe opera closes as it began with a fairy chorus. The boys of the POV Chorus managed Britten’s spiky rhythms and dissonances with assurance. Daniel Yaxley (Cobweb) in particular threw heart and soul into the performance as well as guarding Tytania’s bower during the first intermission.

All the talent on stage would have been to no purpose without the orchestra. They played with vibrant and unflagging energy and great attention to detail. Besides keeping tight contact between orchestra and stage, Timothy Vernon conducted with a sense of purpose and overall design and unity doing full justice to Britten’s art.

© 2016 Elizabeth Paterson

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