'A Midsummer Night's Dream', with Mendelssohn's music played by an orchestra in the forest, restores the original excitement of the Wedding March and brings Shakespeare's meditation on love into a contemporary setting
A QUESTION FOR YOU. What do the Wedding March, the year 1809 and the line "I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows" have in common? Well, the composer Felix Mendelssohn was born in 1809. A precocious youth, he went to see a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dreamwhen he was 17. He was so impressed that he came straight home and wrote an "overture" to the play; a shimmery, elfin affair that has been described as one of the most accomplished pieces of music ever written.
The influence of Shakespeare's dreamy, bawdy sylvan romp stayed with Mendelssohn; some 10 years later, he worked with a theatre company to produce a set of a dozen or so incidental pieces to accompany future productions of the play. One of these was to acquire lasting fame as the Wedding March(not Here Comes the Bride- the other one). Most of us have a relative who has walked down the aisle to that particular tune, yet few know where the music comes from. Fewer still have heard it in its original context. An ambitious new production by Storytellers Theatre Company and the Irish Chamber Orchestra will, however, give us a rare chance to do just that.
"When Anthony Marwood took over as artistic director of the in 2006 we had a conversation," says Liam Halligan of Storytellers. "He'd seen some of my work before and he knew that I incorporated live music as much as I could in everything I did.
We talked about the possibility of working together, finding something that would involve text and music. So then he come up with this idea. He wanted to do Mendelssohn's incidental music, and we talked about the possibility of doing the text as well - because as far as we know, it hasn't been done in a very long time."
The first task was to inquire into the logistics of the production. "We thought about how many actors we would need, could we do all the music, could we do all the text, how long would it need to be - and we discovered that with seven actors we could tell the whole story and keep all the music. Obviously we've had to edit the text. But it's pretty much equally balanced, with 40 minutes of music and 42 pages of text."
What they really didn't want, though, was to present a play with music - or a concert with bits of poetry woven in. "We wanted to avoid a lovely piece of music, and then a lovely piece of text, and then music and so on," says Halligan. "We wanted to find a way of integrating it fully so that it all becomes one."
They brought Lawrence Evans, an English director and choreographer who has vast experience working with music and musicians, on board to co-direct with Halligan. "He did Stravinsky's The Soldier's Talewith the Academy of St Martin in the Fields, with Anthony playing the violin. Lawrence had him dancing and playing at the same time - which was incredibly exciting to watch." They also brought back Orlando Jopling, the conductor and composer who worked on the arrangements of Sinéad O'Connor's Theologyalbum for the Irish Chamber Orchestra at last year's Shannon festival.
ONE REASON WHY the Mendelssohn/ Shakespeare piece isn't done very often, he explains, is that the music needs to be arranged for a chamber ensemble. "Most small theatre companies don't have the resources to use a big symphony orchestra," he says. "I don't know why the big orchestras don't do it, though. It's a complicated collaboration, I suppose. It has been done a couple of times in England - but what we're doing differently is that I'm actually there in the rehearsal room with the actors. For me, that's completely groundbreaking."
This way of working allows the actors to work out precise timings. They also get to know the music really well. But the main advantage, Jopling insists, is that it adds immeasurably to the creative process. "We can actually shape the piece, make decisions about how some parts actually work. They've changed things because of what I'm doing; I've changed things because of what they're doing. That's the exciting bit. And that's what hardly ever happens. Usually the orchestra is bolted on at the last minute: suddenly there's music, and it all becomes a different thing."
Not this time, though. The Irish Chamber Orchestra will - literally - be right in the thick of it. "They're the forest," says Jopling. "For a start, they'll be standing rather than sitting. This suits the ICO, who give incredibly energised performances anyhow. It also fits with performance practice of the period. In Mendelssohn's day the musicians would all have been standing. Also it will be lit beautifully, which will make it incredibly atmospheric. The music stands will be the forest and it will all happen around them."
Jopling - who looks much younger than his 38 years - will be dressed as the young Mendelssohn. "It's the night he comes back from seeing the play," says Liam Halligan. "He's in his bedroom and he's imagining the overture and it just starts to happen all around him. Musicians start to play. Characters appear out of the orchestra and out of the audience. We're performing in three very different concert halls - different sizes and shapes - so it has the feeling of an event or, in the words of the Sixties, a 'happening'. We chose to do this quite deliberately because the venues are so different. The idea is that the music - the play - happens in that space. So our set for the production is the concert hall on that night. For this reason we're not using period costumes or anything. But we will use the auditorium, the back wall of the stage, the musician's stands, anything we possibly can use. And the 'rude mechanicals' - the workers in Shakespeare's play - they're now people who work in the concert hall: the cleaner, the tea lady, the technical staff. It's very much here and now."
NOR WILL IT shy away from the muscular bawdiness of Shakespeare's original text. To quote from Halligan's programme note, "Orlando, Lawrence and myself are not fans of sentimentality and we agreed, crucially, that both Shakespeare and Mendelssohn were exploring the actuality of desire."
The cast, meanwhile, come from both an acting and a singing background; Carrie Crowley is to play Titania/Hippolyta, while the roles of Oberon/Theseus will be taken by Walter van Dyk. "Carrie loves to sing, and understands music," says Halligan. "And Walter is a trained classical tenor and has huge experience with Shakespeare. Then we've got a fine young graduate from the Samuel Beckett Centre, Brian Bennett, playing Puck." The list is completed by two young Dublin actors, Mary Kelly and Dorothy Cotter, plus two Irish actors who trained with Lawrence Evans in London, Mark Fitzgerald and Liam Clarke.
"Because we're in concert halls and very large spaces, their playing needs to be very brave," says Halligan. "It needs to be big and bold and clear, because you're playing with an orchestra and some of the speeches are arias, really. It is a heightened text, and even though we're putting it in a contemporary context the language is still heightened - you can't pretend it isn't. And they're really on for it."
THE THEME OF the play could hardly be more apt for our troubled social times. "It's about love," says Halligan. "What is love about? Is there such a thing as real love? It's about different versions of love - and it's about marriage. The three couples do get married at the end of the play, and we've been sponsored by de Stafford's bridal gown shop in Exchequer Street, so the girls will have three beautiful contemporary dresses to wear." Kathy de Stafford is, as fashionistas will no doubt be aware, an award-winning designer herself. Be prepared, therefore, for some "ahhh" moments - as well as some typically caustic Shakespearean observations on, of all topics, climate change.
"I was really struck by Titania's speech at the beginning of the play," says Halligan. "Given the weather that we've had, the whole business of the seasons changing their wonted liveries and the mazed world knowing not which is which. It seemed so appropriate - when we were putting this together, it was raining relentlessly. Right through June, July and August."
You can always rely on Shakespeare to shake up your view of things. But what of Mendelssohn? The music of this Jewish prodigy, whose grandfather was the highly regarded philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and whose father converted to Lutheranism in order not to damage his son's career as a musician in 19th-century Germany, has fallen out of fashion slightly over the past decade. Perhaps the 200th anniversary of his birth next year will prompt a re-examination of his musical opus - a sadly truncated one, for Mendelssohn died at 37 after hearing about the death of his sister.
"It's a real pity that Mendelssohn didn't write more dramatic or operatic music," says Orlando Jopling. "He's got a fantastic sense of drama. When he worked with a stage director on the music for A Midsummer Night's Dreamin the 1840s, he literally composed the music as they were going along. It must have been the most exciting thing, and we'd like to get a flavour of that. Some popular music is so hackneyed that we forget that magic spark. But it's the aim of all performance, really, to make it seem as if we're composing it as we go along. If we can capture some of that it will be great.
" The Wedding Marchis a good example of what I'm talking about, because it's actually a dance. I think people will see it in a totally fresh context in this production - and it will make total sense. It's a stately baroque dance with an incredible graceful rhythmic energy. Nowadays it's always played on the organ - which was never intended - and it's always staid and slow and lugubrious as the bride walks up the aisle. There's also a middle section which is never, ever played at weddings - a passionate, flowing, brimming-over melody. I think people will be really surprised and excited when they hear it. I hope so, anyway."
• A Midsummer Night's Dreamwill be performed at University Concert Hall, Limerick on Thursday, at the Curtis Auditorium, Cork, on Friday, and the National Concert Hall, Dublin, on Sunday
