Reviews of A Midsummer Night's Dreamat the Galway Arts Festival and Wilson, RTÉ NSO/Wood, NCH, Dublin

Galway Arts Festival: A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Town Hall Theatre

A Midsummer Night's Dream, a crowd-pleasing confection of romantic pursuits and evasions, a still frighteningly accurate depiction of sexual politics and predators, and a comedy that never passes by a joke too high or too low without stopping to say hello, always ends with a play within a play. Performed by the "rude mechanicals", an all-male group with delusions of adequacy, this show also suggests that the path of true love never did run smooth, roughened further with forbidden love, tragedy and that old staple of Elizabethan theatre and pier-side comedy: men in dresses.

Played with the same delightful audacity as every other scene in Edward Hall’s production with his all-male ensemble, Propeller, the sequence’s artful awkwardness is amusing and revealing. Shakespeare’s stock gags gain a contemporary gloss that makes every joke seem fresh-minted, but as the onstage audience cluck and mock their amateur efforts, we should examine ourselves. Haven’t we just spent an evening laughing at similarly overblown, rough-hewn manoeuvres? Aren’t we being asked to giggle at a battle of the sexes waged by men in dresses? A boy-player agenda certainly has historical precedence, but it’s unclear what it now brings to the play. Several lines do acquire a knowing piquancy: “Let me not play a woman,” pleads Flute (played by John Dougall), “I have a beard coming.” But given that Richard Frame’s brilliant take on Hermia, crew-cut and high-pitched, becomes more effective when his voice plunges several octaves in a growl of rage, one wonders if the entire production could have been edgier – and truer to itself – if every part was played male without apology.

That might have underscored much of the play’s more trenchant menace, something Hall is inclined to forsake. It’s unclear, for instance, that Hippolyta has been “wooed by the sword” when a gentler reading may have been the prerogative of performer Jonathan Livingstone. When Jon Trenchard’s Puck is played as an amusing sprite in tutu and ruby slippers, Bob Barrett’s Bottom is a masterclass in comic timing, and more than one gag rises and falls to the sound of a slide whistle, the show will always err on the side of larks.

Physical comedy is demanding enough, so when the fairy kingdom and mortal world are dizzy with desires, it's the physical precision of these performances that dazzles. Nowhere is this funnier than in an inspired reunion between Frame's Hermia and Jack Tarlton's Lysander, truly worth the price of admission alone. Ironically, Frame's performance is a reminder of what great parts Shakespeare wrote for women, in a theatre still stingy with them. Otherwise, the act encapsulates the wit, elegance and merriment of men behaving badly. PETER CRAWLEY

In repertory with The Merchant of Veniceuntil Sun, July 26

Wilson, RTÉ NSO/Wood

NCH, Dublin

The RTÉ Summer Lunchtime series is a favourable one for the woodwinds of the NSO. Lead clarinettist John Finucane is conducting two of the 17 concerts, while three of his colleagues are taking their turn as soloist.

First of the three to step forward was oboist Adrian Wilson, who joined the NSO as section leader in 2007. The positive impact he's been making in that position was affirmed in two short but sweet solo items: a two-movement Concertino by Donizetti, and Morricone's indispensable Gabriel's Oboe.

The Donizetti, originally for oboe and piano, was given in a version by the NSO's former cor anglais player Helmut Seeber. Other modern orchestrations of this work exist, but Seeber's decision to score it for strings alone meant there was nothing to distract from Wilson's poetically refined playing. Here and in the melting moment of Gabriel's Oboe, the economical yet effective direction by guest conductor Matthew Wood made me wish for the opportunity of hearing him in more substantial repertory.

At the moment, the young Australian is associate conductor of the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra. This, his debut appearance with the NSO, was a notable success on both technical and interpretive levels – amply illustrated by the artfully negotiated chops and changes of Verdi's Nabucco Overture.

Though often treated as an exercise in martial rigidity, the Triumphal March and Balletfrom the same composer's Aida bounced along, flitting effortlessly from one fantastic texture to the next. And while Ponchielli's Dance of the Hoursmight have been a little more teasing, the cellos sang, the decorative work was beautifully proportioned, and the charge to the finish captured a rare sense of impetuosity under fine control. ANDREW JOHNSTONE