Word: theseus
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...clear even before the lights go up the director's vision of A Midsummer Night's Dream: counterpoint over harmony. If the music doesn't bring that message home, Epstein has added a brief masque to accompany the overture: before a Paolo Uccello-like tapestry, the helmeted figures of Theseus and Hippolyta have it out with swords (Hippolyta wins...
With less care this discord-first interpretation could turn the Dream into a rowdy cockfight, with lovers, parents, fairies and rustics tussling through scene after scene. But Epstein draws nearly all of his conflict from the text--except for an amusing pre-marital spat between Theseus and Hippolyta that makes some dramatic sense but seems only marginally present in Shakespeare's original. Everywhere else, the conflicts in this production neatly fit into a world thrown out of kilter by the feud between Oberon and Titania, the presiding deities. The explosive initial entrance of the lovers and Egeus, grunting and panting...