Advertised as A Midsummer Night’s Dream with the music of Gilbert and Sullivan, A Midsummer Night’s Savoy is actually a bizarre tale of love and trickery, with only tenuous links to Shakespeare’s original in the form of some character crossovers. Nonsensical, utterly charmless and embarrassingly bad, this is definitely a show to miss.
The script is badly-written and full of bad theatre clichés. At one point two of the characters, the Lords, make a huge scene out of trying to be in the foreground in a desperate attempt at comedy. Clearly the creative team thought this would be funny, but I couldn’t help but roll my eyes and let out a sigh. Equally the large amount of mimed interruptions to songs reeked of GCSE drama and was very embarrassing.
Some of the songs make no sense within the context of the story, and it seems that the writers simply chose their favourite songs from the Gilbert and Sullivan repertoire and forced them into the story. When Aline sings after her confession of love for Alexis, Fair Moon to Thee I Sing is a poor song choice as it has no link to the storyline.
In addition these are consistently badly sung and, almost without exception. Women sang with breathy tones and didn’t seem to understand how to fully use their voices at the top of their ranges, while men relied too heavily on vibrato to mask their technically weak voices. Singing is relatively strong in the four-part harmony sections, however is not strong enough to make up for the failures of soloists and single-gender choruses.
The acting is also pretty terrible. Diane Kerr, as the wood mother is particularly bad, with eyes darting anywhere but at the character she addresses, and bizarre inflection in her lines. Graham Webster as Alexis could easily have been confused with a plank of wood, and Iona Edmonstone as Buttercup struck a surprising balance between in-your-face irritating childishness while acting and uncharismatic, dull singing performances.
The lighting was boring and didn’t change significantly enough for anyone to notice. This was a real shame as it could have been used to great effect to differentiate between scenes, given the lack of set. Another issue was that characters who were meant to be dressed identically were donning different outfits. The fairies used far too much glitter and looked like children playing at dressing up. The importance of good costume in a visual spectacle had been totally overlooked. The whole affair was messy and very amateur.
The fringe brings to light a multitude of extremely talented amateur creators performers who display their work with professionalism and aplomb. Here, this is not the case. Embarrassing and awkward, A Midsummer Night’s Savoy is an ill-conceived and poorly-performed waste of time.
