Julie Taymor calls William Shakespeare one of “the most prolific screenwriters in history.” So it’s apt that she’s adapted his work for three films: “Titus Andronicus,” “The Tempest,” and now “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” While the first two were made specifically for the screen — “The Tempest” famously starred Helen Mirren as Prospero — the latter is a filmed version of her 2014 stage triumph for Theatre for A New Audience. And on June 22, Fathom Events and Omniverse Vision will present the film at select theaters followed by screenings nationwide throughout the summer.Taymor’s production of this classic comedy, which was written to bless a marriage, inaugurated the off-Broadway company’s new home at Brooklyn’s Polonsky Shakespeare Center. But it also re-christened the director as one of the most inventive and original artists of her time. She is, of course, the creative genius behind the most successful musical in history, “The Lion King” — an achievement that was followed by the widely publicized debacle of “Spider-Man.” There is some poetic justice that Taymor has regained her footing with this stunning production of “Midsummer.” Her work has always induced fever dreams among audiences and here the phantasmagorical is expertly woven around the timeless tale of love run amok in a forest populated with sprites, fairies, and doltish, stage-struck craftsmen. What the film provides that the stage could not is an emotional intimacy enhanced by the score by Eliot Goldenthal, Taymor’s longtime collaborator and life partner.The director recently sat down with ARTINFO to discuss her new take on “what fools these mortals be” and why Shakespeare, as cynical and savvy as he might have been, nonetheless was one of love’s most passionate boosters. Your production is unflinching in showing the dark side of love. Was that to add more power to the happy resolutions? Just as “Titus [Andronicus]” was one of the greatest dissertations on violence, “Midsummer” investigates every aspect of love. Because Shakespeare is so daring, he’s able to show the phoniness, the dark side, the perverse side, and the hurtful and dangerous side of love. But ultimately, it’s the power of love that succeeds in the play.In which characters does Shakespeare embody that faith? There’s the faith that Oberon and Titania will last. They go through hell. He humiliates her, she rejects him, but when she wakes from the dream who is in front of her? Who rocks the ground with her? Oberon. Shakespeare has tremendous irony and cynicism but he ultimately sides with love and that’s inspiring.Oberon makes a total jackass out of Titania. How’s that love? What’s great about a film is that you get the close up of an actor, and David Harewood [in the role of Oberon], when he decides to undo his charm, has such a look of pain and regret on his face. We know they’re sexy together but there’s also fire between them and incredible passion and love.What precipitates their falling out is the Indian boy that they both want to possess—It’s really that he’s philandering and Titania says very directly that if you’re going to behave like that, I’m not going to have anything to do with you. The play shows this middle-aged marriage in crisis, the younger woman who comes along, the prettier one, and it becomes a power struggle between the two of them. The boy is just an excuse, a pawn, just like children can be a pawn in a horrendous divorce.The lovers in “Midsummer” usually just come off as idiots. That’s something that I wanted to avoid, the silliness of these characters. Some previous productions make them appear as though they’re interchangeable. Not at all. They’re very distinct, in language and costume and character, and I’m very moved by them.How so? I do feel that they are stripped bare. Literally. When the play begins Hermia has this very Alexander McQueen bell-shaped dress and her hair is tight and formal. But by the time of the pillow fight, she’s down to her undies and her hair is loose and wild. Even after she’s abused by Lysander, she hope that nothing bad will happen to him and some of her lines are heartbreaking. I wanted to make sure things didn’t go into silliness for any of the characters. I wanted the audience to be disturbed by those men being so cruel. Doesn’t Helena sort of ask for it in her obsessiveness over Demetrius? But that’s because she’s really smart and really deep and knows that she is the right one for him. That’s because she truly sees his nature and loves him for it. I can’t stand Helenas who are campy, dopey, or pathetic. Our Helena is elegant and intelligent. She’s the real thing. And he ultimately comes to realize that. He just got distracted by the pretty “It” girl.But it takes love juice to make him realize it? What I believe, and this is neither right nor wrong but what I believe, is that some people need a drug, whether it’s ecstasy or juice from a flower. They get so caught up in who society thinks they should love or desire and they need to be opened up. I imagined Demetrius as this uptight, Wall Street-type who cannot see the truth until it’s revealed to him, and he needed that juice to see the truth. You see that he is capable of becoming lovesick.What’s the dangerous part of love expressed in “Midsummer”? That love can go terribly wrong. No matter how much we love, there’s always the fascination with the new love, the prettier one, the sexier one, the one who’s dangerous, the one who doesn’t want you. Shakespeare is taunting the audience: “This is how love can be totally unsettling and terrifying but if you have faith, and you really love, it might be okay.” There’s tremendous optimism at the end of the play.Has that optimism made you want to marry Elliot Goldenthal after living and working together for more than three decades? [Laughs] No! We’re thirty years happily unmarried. My father, when he was alive, would call Elliot his “son-outlaw.” We’re together because we love each other. We’re a marriage made in heaven not in law.Isn’t that better? Shakespeare realizes that marriage is kind of an un-normal relationship. But these are bonds created by society to protect the children. What I tried to do with this production is show the raw, unfettered emotions of man’s natural state by making what I called the “rude elementals” [the fairies] prepubescent children who are dangerous and exciting and raw. Figuring out how to do the fairy world was key.How porous is the wall between the fairy world and the normal world? The play does move back and forth between the two because there’s not a clear line between our waking and our sleeping. We have “day dreams.” It’s wonderful in that way. We move from the banal and the mundane of the rude mechanicals to the ethereal and untouchable of the fairy world. And they bounce off of each other, which is what happens in the best films. Shakespeare was the great cinematic writer of his time and that’s why 900 movies have been made of Shakespeare plays.
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