A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Novello
Thriller — Live
Lyric
Too long. Too long. Way, way too long. Is it just me or is A Midsummer Night’s Dream twice the length it should be? No, it’s not just me. It’s everyone. It has to be. And I blame the movies. Billy Wilder reckoned a comedy should last no more than an hour and a half. ‘Every minute over 90,’ he said, ‘counts against you.’ Obviously, films aren’t plays but we’ve been schooled unwittingly in the celluloid aesthetic and we can’t park it in the cloakroom, we bring it to the auditorium.
It seems odd that directors will happily lumber Shakespeare with all kinds of bad-choice complexities (pin-stripe suits, girls playing boys, video projections, guns for swords) in an effort to accommodate the Elizabethan world to modern tastes and yet they’re reluctant to acknowledge our conviction that comedies should be brisk, punchy affairs which release you from their enchantment within two hours.
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