Southasian Shakespearewallah:“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
directed by Tim Supple
sponsored by the British Council

If in 2006 Vishal Bharadwaj transported "Othello" into the brown badlands of Uttar Pradesh with his film Omkara, British director Tim Supple's production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" could easily have been set in some mythical forest in the Vindhyas. Why, it could even have been an untold canto from the Aranyakanda of Ramayana, with Shakespeare's fairies as lively vanaras, and Puck a young, playful Hanuman himself. In the true spirit of free creatures of the forest, Supple's creatures indulge in acrobatic feats, climb up ladders and shimmy down ropes, roll in the mud and jump in the air.

The opening scene of the play – which premiered in India during 2006 and is now again on tour in the Subcontinent, sponsored by the British Council – does not prepare viewers for what is to come. It is formal, even solemn, as Philostrate, sidekick to the duke of Athens (and who is later Puck) walks onto the stage, with the sound of traditional Hindostani instrumentation in the background. As he runs his hand through the water at the front of the stage, the spotlights reflect the surface's shimmer onto the roof. Embodied in this is, evidently, the first instruction that Supple wants to send to his audience: to look, not listen. This is followed by the well-known scene in the court, in which Theseus, the duke of Athens, orders Hermia and Demetrius to get married, in accordance with her father's wishes. Actually, Hermia has two other choices as well – death, or life as a nun. But then this famous scene changes, as in the middle of his monologue Theseus suddenly breaks into Sinhala. At this point, those in the audience are forced to scramble frantically for the familiar. This reviewer chose to replay the memory of the reflected sparkle of water on the theatre's ceiling, while coming to terms with an unfamiliar language.

Just then, a bunch of fairies burst into the scene, literally tearing apart Sumant Jayakrishnan's paper-covered bamboo set, and making their ways through the holes – bending, jumping and dancing. With that, a tone of frenzied movement is set, a tone that turns out to play a crucial role in this vehemently multilingual production. This is a play in which the characters speak in seven different languages – Tamil, Malayalam, Hindi, Bengali, Marathi, Sinhala and English. Or, it could have been eight, taking into account the bits of Sanskrit on which other reviewers have claimed to pick up.

Folk Shakespeare
This performance is set in the dance-drama tradition of folk theatre in many parts of Southasia, with relatively basic visual settings that include lots of colour, music and movement. In a way, this idiom was also the starting point for Supple, whose brief from the British Council was for a production that brought together artists from across India and Sri Lanka. (Supple was previously best known for his novel theatrical renditions of classical works, including The Jungle Book, and Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.) To this end, the director travelled throughout the two countries, in order to watch and attempt to gain an understanding of the performing arts here. In so doing, he was impressed by the diversity of the arts and elasticity of the artists he came across.

For this new project, it was during Supple's Southasia travels that the choice of William Shakespeare became obvious. Supple recently explained this thought process to this reviewer by pointing out that there are two sides to the bard: the writer, who understands ritual folk theatre in its natural form; and the consummate poet, with strong text and characterisation. Western audiences are, by and large, familiar with the latter aspect, but not the links to folk theatre, which probably explains why this particular production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" may have come as a happy revelation to many in the UK, where it has been received with particular warmth, including in the theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare's home turf.

Once the decision was made with regard to the playwright, the choice of play seemed clear enough. Think of the idiomatic parallels with Southasian society: star-crossed lovers, parental opposition, the lingering option of simply running away. In addition, for that matter, there is the plethora of myths, ancient and modern, about kings and queens, fairies and spirits, magic and mayhem. In hindsight, admittedly, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" does seem like something of a potboiler formula; but then, which of Shakespeare's creations does not have all the ingredients of melodrama? The basic plot in this new production, however, is strictly as we know it, and all the familiar elements are in place. As such, it is just as well that Supple chose one of Shakespeare's more popular works for this challenging project.

That 'difficulty' modifier is apt for the experiences of both the cast and audience, if for no other reason than linguistic (though Supple says he is not ready to admit as much). As the play unfolds, the layers of familiarity are slowly peeled away, as viewers are sucked into the visual experience itself. Shakespeare aficionados may lament the fact that nuances of Shakespeare's original writing are lost in such an 'unusual' creation, but the very fluidity of the concept makes it possible for the audience to interact with the performance in a way that is entirely personal and unique.

For this reviewer, such a moment came on most strongly as the moon (the tailor Starveling, carrying a light), was discussing the nuts and bolts of the Pyramus-Thisbe love story to be performed before the duke. Suddenly, he breaks into "Inda nilava thaan naan kaiyile pudicchen en rasavukkaga!" (I held the moon in my hands, for my prince!), a long-forgotten, silly song from a Tamil movie of the 1980s. Suddenly, there in the midst of a Shakespearean comedy, came a sharp twang of nostalgia for a childhood in Madras watching and enjoying obscure Tamil films. This emotion was quickly combined with that happy, loose feeling of enjoying something so breathtakingly absurd – certainly an experience that 'conventional' theatre rarely provides.

Sound and light
It is a combination of elements that works particularly well in this performance. In particular, what is interesting is the way in which the sounds of different languages inevitably become increasingly less alienating as the performance proceeds. (This could well be that due to the fact that the audience eventually gets over the initial feelings of exclusion that an unknown language can create – an important lesson in itself.) What particularly contributes to this eventual comfort with the production is the extensive use of colour in the midst of what is otherwise a fairly barebones set. Visually arresting single-colour tones are used to their most compelling effect, especially a deep red that runs as a motif throughout the performance. Puck is easily the most likable character in the play, as he cavorts about, with hardly any sign of the (Robin) Goodfellow he is generally considered to be. Rather, he is something of a fearless prankster among both friends and strangers, looking on mischievously and relishing the mayhem he sets loose. The high point of his characterisation here comes during the clash between the two mixed-up couples – Hermia and Lysander, and Helena and Demetrius. To add to the already existing chaos,

Puck walks calmly across the stage, trailing a long elastic rope and tying it haphazardly around the two couples. This is clearly a moment when the midsummer's dream must have started taking on nightmarish qualities to the already befuddled lovers. According to reports, different elements of this production seem to have worked best for audiences in India and abroad. Audiences in the UK, for instance, unused to a music-and-movement format unless it was clearly labelled as a 'musical', have found this production enchanting, even moving. In this vein, Supple and his cast seem to have succeeded in offering up a Shakespeare re-created for an audience that has been oversaturated with conservative renderings of his popular plays.

To audiences in India, on the other hand, familiar with the concept of bhava and rasa, the play offers other surprises. Perhaps most apparent is the particularly 'earthy' physical interactions between the characters. This is something that ought not to raise particular comment in the 'land of the Kama Sutra', of course, but always seems to anyway. Indeed, sexuality is so much a part of this play that one reviewer noted that anyone filming the action on the stage could be forgiven for calling it 'Lust in the Dust'. Archana Ramaswamy, who plays Hippolyta and Titania, has characterised the play as the movement from the 'civilised world', which demands constant control over one's emotions, into the jungle, where baser instincts take over and there is no room for the purely rational. This can be seen, for instance, in Titania's mad passion for the ass-faced Puck. The forest does take you away from the real world, seems to be the suggestion: it is the other world, the one where anything is believable, and, if not believable, then still entirely possible.

Organic interpretation
Regardless of all else, this production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" would have remained little more than an exercise in novelty were it not for the ways in which the performers have approached their parts. Archana Ramaswamy readily admits that neither she nor most of the rest of the cast are 'Shakespearean actors' – at least in the sense in which the term is known in the West, as actors thoroughly familiar with and trained in specific Shakespearean roles.

In fact, many are not even actors. Rather, this ensemble cast includes classical dancers, martial-arts exponents and acrobats, alongside professional actors. Many of them found themselves re-reading and trying to understand the bard's midsummer dream even as they were auditioned for the play several times over. This process, Ramaswamy suggests, helped the cast to interpret and play the characters in a particularly "organic" way, adding layer upon fresh layer as the roles were fleshed out and rehearsed.

The end result is certainly a unique experience, to view Shakespeare through the lens of traditional Southasian folk theatre. The reconciliation between Theseus and Hippolyta at the end of the performance, for instance, becomes an absolutely mesmeric dance sequence. Ultimately, the tricky part in this production is not the way different languages (spoken and performance) come together, but rather the way they stop short of being 'exotic'. This is not just another subcontinental extravaganza like, say, the Bollywood window display at Harrods. For his part, Supple snaps at the very mention of the word: "I have approached this with as much honesty as possible," he says. "What can I do if some people find it 'exotic'?"

Supple's production of this midsummer escapade, with its airy, dreamlike elements, brings to life Nick Bottom's wise line: "I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream." When uttering these lines, Bottom is unable to fathom entirely what he has seen, or thought he has seen, but is nonetheless willing to accept it for what it is – perhaps a wonderful dream, perhaps a fantastical experience. Following this show, the audience walks out of the theatre in a similar state of mind: perhaps not having completely understood the text in its entirety, but feeling touched by a poetic, magical, visually compelling dream.

~ Charukesi Ramadurai is a market-research consultant, traveller and photographer based in Bombay.