AN ENGLISH REVIEW – Albrecht Zieper, responsible for the music, created an atmosphere that perfectly matched the magical theme. An important element was a piano that circled the stage consistently and was almost used in every scene . This little effect made the play even more special and mysterious.
The stage set was creatively designed, transforming the set into a mystical Athenian forest with special lightning and dark colours like brown, black and dark green. The use of curtains and a bed hanging from the ceiling brought the play to life, as well as the actor from Puck playing a wall in the last scene of the play.
Katrin Kerstin, who designed the set, also had the ingenious idea after having flowers fall down from the ceiling. Although not all flowers landed as intended, it didn’t distract from the overall effect.
Of course, the most crucial aspect of the play were the actors. With only five performers on stage (Alina Danko, Anatol Käbisch, Anne Kulbatzki, Luis Quintana, Maria Scharf) all characters of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” were still casted and most of the actors got at least two roles. While some found this a bit confusing it was easy to follow the changes if you one paid close attention.
Especially the character Puck was well represented and full of life, jumping across the stage, exactly the way one would have pictured him.
It is also important to mention that Alina Danko as Helen Feld from Ukraine just two years ago. Nevertheless, she speaks german really well and was able to deal with the German version of Shakespeare’s complex language.
Especially eye-catching were the various outfit and character changes that were constantly happening before our eyes. Witnessing the actors impressing abilities to transform into the charismatic protagonists from Shakespeare’s Midsummer Nights Dream, proved once again how important it is to not only read Shakespeare’s works but to play with his words and rearrange and interpret their meanings in all sorts of creative ways. One of Kraushaar’s individual decisions was to portray Hippolyta handcuffed and gagged next to her fiancé Theseus. In the first place, this draws a very strong constrast to their love story in the written version of Midsummer Nights Dream, but digging deeper into their backrounds, we found this character dynamic to be very convincing. Playing with the characters relations and intertwining new constellations were both reasonably and convincingly by Kraushaar and made the play special as well as educatating.
Overall, the Ernst Deutsch Theaters Production was a Great Chan be for us to watch a well- executed performance that combined comedy as well as modern and old Shakespearen language. They really put a lot of effort into making the play as exciting and detailed as possible with a fantastic result.
Even if you are not a Shakespeare-fan, this play is definitely worth seeing and might change your opinion about his work.