A Midsummer Night's Dream, Garsington Opera review ★★★★★

This production of Benjamin Britten's opera was first seen in Santa Fé, an open-air theatre where the lights of Los Alamos, the atomic research centre at which J Robert Oppenheimer developed the Hiroshima bomb, can be seen twinkling in the distance.

The central image of director/designer Netia Jones’s set is a luxuriant tree thrusting up into the middle of a trendy black and white living room which has scientific accessories – an outsized gyroscope and a giant petri dish onto which images of microbes are projected.

It must have looked striking against the desert backdrop of Santa Fé, but it might have been expected to look more at home at Garsington, where the glass walls of the theatre allow the surrounding trees to become part of the set. Yet, even with the theatre blinds dropped in for Act 2, bright evening sunshine bleaches out all D M Wood’s lighting effects, and it isn’t until dusk has arrived for Act 3 that the lighting can begin to create some overdue woodland atmosphere.

Jerone Marsh-Reid as Puck. Photo: Julian Guidera

Jones’s interpretation of the opera poses more conundrums than a cryptic crossword. Who is the drunk in the white suit who, before the orchestra plays a note, crashes to the floor at the feet of the lady in the long white gown? It’s not until Act 3 that we find out that he is Theseus, the Duke of Athens (sonorously sung by Nicholas Crawley) who is apparently not looking forward to his imminent wedding to Hippolyta (Christine Byrne, stepping in with aplomb for the indisposed Christine Rice).

As the music starts, these mysterious figures are replaced by two other characters, in black versions of the same costumes, who turn out to be Oberon (counter-tenor Iestyn Davies) and Tytania (soprano Lucy Crowe), the Fairy King and Queen whose quarrel has thrown nature out of joint. Jones’s conception of Oberon appears to be of an Elon Musk-type plutocrat with depression, perhaps regretting whatever his Los Alamos plant has unleashed upon the world.

Do the characters in black represent the subconscious of the characters in white? Does the animal mask that Oberon wears suggest that he is no more highly developed than Bottom when he wears the ass’s head. Is 8 across a nine-letter word beginning with Z?

Lucy Crowe as Titania and Richard Burkhard as Bottom. Photo: Craig Fuller

Both Davies and Crowe are outstanding, and energy levels jumped whenever Crowe steps on stage, every word delivered with authority and exemplary diction. The quarrelling pair are accompanied by their band of fairies, the Garsington Opera Youth Company, who sing gloriously but are given little to do other than pop in and out of holes in the stage floor.

The single, unchanging set means there is no sense of moving to a 'different part of the forest' as the four young lovers appear dressed in Ken and Barbie costumes. Stephanie Wake-Edwards’s Hermia, with a gloriously rich contralto voice, leads a strong quartet comprising Camilla Harris, Caspar Singh and James Geidt (confidently replacing James Newby, also indisposed.)

The Rude Mechanicals, rehearsing their play for the Duke’s wedding celebrations, are all vividly characterised but, although Richard Burkhard as Bottom sings the part beautifully, he underplays a character which should be a life force sweeping all before him. His ass’s head is a dull imitation, also black, of the mask we had got used to seeing Oberon popping on and off all evening, so the great moment when Bottom first appears translated into an ass goes for nothing.

Richard Burkhard as Bottom and James Way as Flute. Photo: Craig Fuller

Audience favourite tenor James Way as Flute gets the best gown of the evening for his 'mad scene', Britten’s wicked parody of the mad-scene from Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor. (Britten was present at Covent Garden on the famous occasion when Joan Sutherland became a superstar singing this opera. He hated it.)

Jones’s cerebral approach to a sensual opera was also reflected in the pit, in the brisk tempi adopted by Douglas Boyd, never allowing the Philharmonia Orchestra to linger over any of the score’s many beauties. Garsington Opera is making its debut at the BBC Proms in September with this production. There, the orchestra will not be confined to a deep orchestral pit and this superbly sung performance of an opera about outdoor spaces may, ironically, blossom in the vast interior spaces of the Royal Albert Hall.

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A Midsummer Night's Dream is sung in English, with English surtitles. Further performances are on 27 June, 2, 4, 13, 19 July. A semi-staged Proms performance at the Royal Albert Hall is at 7PM on Tues 10 Sept – click here for tickets. – and on BBC Sounds. A coach runs to Garsington from High Wycombe station (trains from Marylebone): click here for details