The Theater: Old Play in Manhattan, Oct. 4, 1954

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (by William Shakespeare) remains, even for the world’s most famed producers of Shakespeare, something of a problem child. The Old Vic’s version is neither Shakespearean in essence nor artistic as a whole. But on its own terms there is something to be said for a good deal of it—to be said, at moments, with even such words as “lovely” and “fairylike.”

Coleridge spoke of A Midsummer Night’s Dream as “the lyrical dramatized,” but its glories persist in being a great deal more lyrical than dramatic. Hence this is A Midsummer Night’s Dream treated, as in 19th century days, as a kind of operatic spectacle, and in much the same 19th century style. It is a Dream that uses, as did a Kean or a Beerbohm Tree, Mendelssohn’s enchantingly equivalent score; a Dream employing the classic patterns of romantic ballets; a Dream mounted with lush, moonlit décor evoking Poe’s world rather than Shakespeare’s.

As a result, Mendelssohn is more the hero of the evening than Shakespeare; Moira Shearer’s dancing far surpasses any actor’s speech; the ass’s head that Bottom wears is more entertaining than Stanley Holloway’s Bottom. Only Robert Helpmann as Oberon can render Shakespeare’s diction as well as dance, can become something fleet, mischievous, magical—and believably Shakespearean.

Ultimately the worst defect of the Old Vic production is that by using an almost uncut text it makes matters too sluggish and protracted for a musical spectacle (while so much dancing and music are fatal to any true unfolding of the play). There is thus no harmonized effect, only a medley of impressions; and along with much that is genuinely charming about equally much that is unmercifully dull.