The forest, in this dream, is the theatre. Theatre room and musik-theater. An ‘’upside-down’’ – or better, ‘’a front-and-back,’’ where Shakespeare is winked at and, courteously, left in the dust, jaw on the floor.
At the helm, for the signalling, is Tom Goossens — the “beautiful” wunderkind of the “beautiful company”, — Deschonecompanie.
Since 2017, the Ghent-based Flemish company has come to define their authoritative niche in what seems to be some sort of “un-serious” opera. A little more than serious, and less than “un-thought” for, is the in-quest into Midzommernachtsdroom where the chisel operates on a twofold desk.
Arrangement wise, — opting for the way more minimal Benjamin Haemhouts’ over Felix Mendelssohn’s, placing the ensemble of 7 musicians of Casco Phil, physically in the middle of the artisans’ game as if imprisoned faeries, happy to be the tricked ones for once, instead of the tricksters.
Folio wise, — keeping the magic potion, the artisans, the fog, the “sleep-per-chance-to-dream”, yet rigorously out of donkey head, and the The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, rigorously inclusive of lion head, in a rhyming libretto.
The actors are the artisans, and they keep their off stage names, in addition to their marital status: more seasoned than their un-seasoned director, the two real-life couples, Koen De Graeve and Arian Van Vliet and Peter Van den Begin and Tine Reymer, lead the theatrical dimension of this Musiktheater Transparant production.
And they take it there where stage presence, voice, improvisation and musical finesse live their own beautiful life; it takes a while to get there, — as if in a rehearsal in the backstage of a forest, but when they finally do act as a wall, —de muur!, a moon-head, a Pyramus and a Thisbe en travestie, they deliver what promised.
Then, and only then, we, the audience, are allowed to see the forest. And it ain’t just any forest…
Photo ® Wout Vloeberghs
Shakespearean Tales 