Soundtracking
ShakespearE
16
Bido Lito! April 2015
For their current production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, The
Everyman have opted for a bold approach by bringing in a forwardthinking team that wants to give the Bard's mysterious adventure
a bit of a reboot. Arranger and composer JAMES FORTUNE has
been tasked with adding a contemporary musical edge to the
production, which begs the question, how do you soundtrack
Shakespeare? Josh Potts finds out.
“Oh wicked wall, through whom I see no bliss! Cursed be thy
stones for thus deceiving me!”
These lines are spoken by a man who’s been partially turned into
a donkey and back again, uttered at the mid-point of a disastrous
play within a play. His name is Bottom, and he’ll be familiar to many
of you reading this. He’s clueless, childlike, and committed to giving
the performance of his life. Through him, Shakespeare reminds
us that it’s somewhat gratifying to make an ass of ourselves. But
Elizabethan drama is a wall of understanding, pecked at by a trillion
English classes, the very stones of our culture that never yield lightly
to an ‘A-ha!’ moment. To appreciate the bliss of Shakespeare, we
must fight for it, because The Big Man is never easy. He makes an
ass out of a lot of us.
“I remember absolutely hating it growing up,” says James
Fortune. “Just finding it unnecessarily turgid and boring. Whenever
you see it at its worst, you can see people acting, not thinking the
language is real. But when you strip away the façade and speak the
text...” He holds up his hands, his flat cap a centre point for sheaves
”
of grey light at our window. Fortune has an air of contentment and
self-knowledge. At least in this context, he knows what he’s talking
about. The Everyman Theatre is following a barmy production of
Macbeth with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and he’s been hired
as its musical director. He’s seen a blood-drenched Coriolanus at
the RSC, a hilarious Twelfth Night, even jumped in to help out with
Midsummer, when his mate couldn’t make a few gigs. He’s scored
TV shows and sung in an a capella group. In short, he’s the kind of
curious soul who can edge out conformity and supply an audience
with fresh eyes to make sure they get their money’s worth.
Saying that, he’s candid about acknowledging Midsummer’s
reputation for whimsy and irreverence. The play, along with Romeo
and Juliet, is often seen as a gateway drug to the Bard’s more
complicated oeuvre, having been revived almost consistently since
its first staging. Its imaginative scope – faeries, sprites, and thwarted
lovers running amok in a dream-like forest on the borders of Athens
– has bred endless adaptations and re-workings, ranging from
psychedelic opera to a Levi’s ad. Schoolchildren respond to its
flights of fancy or visual gags, but there is a darker side that
can be kind of passed off as an innocent fantasy; one that
Fortune and his collaborators are keen to emphasise.
“The play starts with a death threat: ‘If you don’t
marry the guy I want you to marry, you’re gonna
die’. You have to take that seriously. Nick
Bagnall [director] has done a fantastic job
of capturing that da