When you go to watch a stage show, you expect to see the action from one viewpoint, you expect the action to be confined to a limited space (the theatre at least, and probably the stage), and you expect the actors to enunciate extra-clearly and move using broad dance-like movements so the audience can hear and see them.
Not on film. Wheareas in a theatre you might create an ambiguous set which imagination could transform from an interior into a forest, in a film you'd just shoot one scene indoors and the next in the forest. Whereas an actor on stage might spit out his t's and roll his r's so he can be heard 30 rows back, a film actor only needs to be heard by a boom mike. Whereas often all you can see of a stage actor are body movements, all you can see in a film closeup is the actor's face.
All of this argues that a successful stage production does not necessarily translate into a successful film. Such is the case here.
Daniel Evans must be the worst Lysander ever to appear on screen. He uses all of his stage mannerisms but no facial expression so the performance is highly unconvincing. Puck also suffers from mime-like movement. The young women are better and Kevin Doyle as Demetrius is quite good. The rude mechanicals take themselves too seriously.
Some attempt has been made to use Osheen Jones as a framing device by suggesting that the play is all his dream (a device stolen, actor and all, by Julie Taymor in her Titus) This idea is not carried through rigorously: we have no idea of what his relationship is supposed to be with the characters--do they represent figures in his waking life? Does the doubling of parts suggest a correspondence in character between Theseus and Oberon, or Puck and Philostrate? Is the fairy story a dream of the human characters who are themselves a dream of Osheen Jones? Who knows? What is clear is that on film a stage with hanging light bulbs looks like . . . a stage. Not a dream landscape. In the end, this version of Midsummer Night's Dream is unconvincing and doesn't know where it is going. It should have been left on stage.
Not on film. Wheareas in a theatre you might create an ambiguous set which imagination could transform from an interior into a forest, in a film you'd just shoot one scene indoors and the next in the forest. Whereas an actor on stage might spit out his t's and roll his r's so he can be heard 30 rows back, a film actor only needs to be heard by a boom mike. Whereas often all you can see of a stage actor are body movements, all you can see in a film closeup is the actor's face.
All of this argues that a successful stage production does not necessarily translate into a successful film. Such is the case here.
Daniel Evans must be the worst Lysander ever to appear on screen. He uses all of his stage mannerisms but no facial expression so the performance is highly unconvincing. Puck also suffers from mime-like movement. The young women are better and Kevin Doyle as Demetrius is quite good. The rude mechanicals take themselves too seriously.
Some attempt has been made to use Osheen Jones as a framing device by suggesting that the play is all his dream (a device stolen, actor and all, by Julie Taymor in her Titus) This idea is not carried through rigorously: we have no idea of what his relationship is supposed to be with the characters--do they represent figures in his waking life? Does the doubling of parts suggest a correspondence in character between Theseus and Oberon, or Puck and Philostrate? Is the fairy story a dream of the human characters who are themselves a dream of Osheen Jones? Who knows? What is clear is that on film a stage with hanging light bulbs looks like . . . a stage. Not a dream landscape. In the end, this version of Midsummer Night's Dream is unconvincing and doesn't know where it is going. It should have been left on stage.