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Visually magnificent
Yohangza’s adaptation of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ was, firstly, a visual spectacle. All other aspects were secondary to its visual magnificence.
One hardly knew what to watch as stylised choreography, tangential caricatures, energetic musicians and ongoing surtitles to the Korean dialogues demanded one’s attention, all at the same time, coming together as a unified whole in the glory and magic that such a text demands.
As adaptations go, this was fairly faithful to the primary plot of the original; the lovers stayed true to the characterisations of the original, while Shakespeare’s Theseus, Hippolyta and Egeus were eliminated, and the fairies were brilliantly double-cast as the lovers themselves.
The rude mechanicals, specifically Nick Bottom the weaver, and the sub-plot of the play-within-the-play were deftly replaced by a herb-collecting woman and her singing. Robin Goodfellow was played cleverly by a pair of impish brothers who display Puckish tendencies of mockery and laughter.
But the finest alteration was also the play’s greatest subversion: in a wicked reversal, it is the Dokkebi queen who tricks her husband, not the other way around.
The play used stylised movement that was both appealing and meaningful, accompanied precisely by thunderous beats; the choreography was varied and perfectly attuned to the play’s live music of percussion and chimes.
The play used quite a bit of slapstick as its humour mechanism: the movements included corporal and bodily comedy; dialogues were occasionally followed by extremely literal depictions (for example, when the character Ik goes back to Hermia’s famous demands to be treated as a spaniel, she accompanies this with a humourous impression of a barking dog).
Manasi Subramaniam
Alwarpet
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