We Need Better Adaptations of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

It appears that the Shakespearean canon may be an unending well for directors, extracted bit-by-bit for its value before being repurposed once again. This may be for good reason; Shakespeare’s plays are certainly feats of dramatic and poetic effort. These stories have become figureheads within the cultural consciousness. But how often must we beat a dead horse? Many of these retellings lack a pointed vision, telling that timeless story almost exactly as it was told before. Then, when directors do bring new thought to these iconic plays, that vision often feels flimsy and lifeless. This is especially ironic considering the breadth of vision in theatrical adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. It seems that when it comes to film, the idea generator runs dry. No play represents this problem greater than A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

One of Shakespeare’s early plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a deceivingly simple, tightly-wrapped comedy. The play runs a triple storyline, featuring the lovers, the rude mechanicals, and the fairies. Hermia loves Lysander, though her father demands she marry Demetrius. Helena loves Demetrius, who violently shrugs her off. Meanwhile, the rude mechanicals (featuring the flamboyant Nick Bottom) prepare a play for the King’s wedding. Finally, the fairy king Oberon wants to steal a young boy from Titania, the fairy queen. Oberon charges the fairy Puck with enchanting Titania to love a horrible beast, which comes in the form of Nick Bottom with an ass’ head. Taking pity on Helena, Oberon also charges Puck to enchant “the Athenian man” to love her. Having mistaken Lysander for Demetrius, Lysander wakes in a rage of love for Helena, bringing chaos. By the end of the play, all is fixed — Lysander loves Hermia, Demetrius loves Helena, Oberon has captured the young boy, and Bottom has been converted back to human form just in time for his players to make a fool of themselves for the King’s wedding. Yet looming in this play is the abuse and humiliation of all its female characters, who cannot escape their dismal fates. This is a Shakespearean trademark, being a persistent tragedy throughout comic narratives. That theme remains under-acknowledged by the play’s adaptors. 

Though there are several film adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, three seem to have gained the greatest cultural standing. First in the tradition is the 1935 film, directed by Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle. One of the first filmed Shakespearian adaptations, this A Midsummer Night’s Dream characterized the genre. The film spends much of its time reveling in the medium, with oversized fairy sequences and grandiose sets. Lost in this film, however, is the sincerity and tragedy of the play’s early  plot. A pre-Uta Hagen film, the acting lacks a necessary humanity and veers into exaggeration. Helena (played by Jean Muir) is presented as whiny and oblivious, never feeling the need to justify her desperation. The film also ignores the utter sexual humiliation of Helena, cutting one of Helena’s most famous, devastating speeches: “Use me but as your spaniel, spurn me, strike me, / Neglect me, lose me; only give me leave, / Unworthy as I am, to follow you.” That’s not to say that the film is a failure of an adaptation — there are some moments of greatness, specifically in Olivia de Haviland’s performance as Hermia, but the directors clearly lack a full understanding of this complex play. That problem that would continue to plague filmmakers for years to come. 

Over sixty years later comes the next landmark being the 1997 film directed by Michael Hoffman. This film brings little new creative direction, making many of the same choices as its 1935 counterpart. While watching, it appears as if the only goal was to bring the story into color, and with some bigger names. Maybe that’s a fruitful venture — having Michelle Pfeiffer decked out in flowers as Titania creates some beautifully lasting tableaus. But to say it’s new or inventive would be inaccurate. Ironically, the film puts much of its creative energy into humanizing the rude mechanicals, an almost entirely comic group. Much time is spent learning about the ‘true’ life of Nick Bottom (played by Kevin Kline), a somewhat fruitless task. This includes several deeply overdrawn monologues, where ploys for sincerity become at best time-sucks, and at worst cringeworthy. The four lovers, on the other hand, are allowed little complexity. The film turns these figures into caricatures, even physicalizing that comic humiliation by making the women fight in a mudpit. Where Bottom is allowed to be real, the lovers are not. The decision seems a bit absurd, and almost entirely unfounded in the source material. This is the fatal flaw of the remake — it barely tries to reinvent the form, and where it does the decisions seem irrational. 

In terms of adaptive choices, Casey Mott’s 2017 ultra-contemporary remake takes the biggest swing. Translated to the modern glamour of a Hollywood setting, this A Midsummer Night’s Dream seems to find its meaning in the pure absurdity of a modernized Shakespeare. The director asks bigger and bigger questions: what if Helena spoke her ‘cupid painted blind’ speech at an Echo Park poetry reading? What if Bottom had not the head of a donkey, but of a literalized ass? And, the longest running gag of the film, wouldn’t it be crazy to speak old english in these modern settings? Still, these questions of comical absurdity don’t necessarily represent ‘vision.’ The film is wild and unexpected, but leaves the feeling of ungroundedness. Many choices were made, but the ‘why’ part remains unfulfilled. Further, modernity for modernity’s sake may not be an entirely valuable directorial decision. There needs to be some reasoning there, to understand why the modernity is valuable to the story being told. Maybe it’s that A Midsummer Night’s Dream says something about our present outlook, or maybe imposing modernity will show us just how far we’ve come. The director has made none of these choices, resulting in a fun but uninspired film. 

None of the film adaptations of A Midsummer Night’s Dream have properly made the mark. For some, that’s because they remake the same story without providing any new insight. For others, the newest ‘vision’ is flimsy and void when put up against the original text. I should note that this is not a ploy to stop making these adaptations. There are so many valuable lessons in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which comments on patriarchal structures and what it means to love. In many other mediums, these adaptations have featured grounded, creative choices that bring new light to the story. Consider the recent Globe production that retold the story with a male Helena, exquisitely showcasing queer agony. Or consider the myriad of ballets and dance pieces based on the piece, introducing flow and intricacy to the tale. It is the filmic medium that has fallen behind, creating such great quantity and yet such diminished quality.