I am currently listening to the BBC Radio 3 recording of A Midsummer Night's Dream. This play was probably the first Shakespeare play I became aware of, well it's a toss up between this one and Romeo and Juliet but I think it more likely that my parents would exposed me to fairies and pseudo-bestiality before teen suicide packs. When my brother and I were little our parents took us to see MND at the open air theatre in Regent's Park. I really wish they'd waited a few years and then I might have appreciated it more but as it is all I can really remember is Puck putting a girdle round the earth in 40 minutes (which didn't take that long), my little brother slept through most of it I recall.
The 1999 film of MND was also, I think, the first film I watched that had nudity. I was eight and that scene of the four lovers lying naked in the undergrowth has stuck with me and since then I've never quite got over my crushes on Dominic West and Anna Friel. Now I come to think of it, although Christian Bale and Calista Flockhart were naked just as much as the other two I've developed quite an aversion to them over the years, maybe it stems from their portrayals of Helena and Demetrius all those years ago, or maybe its because Flockhart just looks like a wimp and Bale has yet to demonstrate to me that he is anything other than a grumpy so-and-so. We may never know, such is the beauty of the adolescent female brain.
But anyway, onto my main point that I was going to make about 10 minutes ago. Poor Helena, she has had the misfortune to fall in love with a bit of an arse, and a fickle arse at that. It's a good thing that the fairies get involved because otherwise he probably would have done a runner with someone else even if Hermia had managed to marry Lysander. I'm not a big fan of any characters in this play actually, except Theseus and Hippolyta and that's probably because they don't really say much. Everyone is rather screwed up and spend the whole play following their genitals and not their heads as my mother would say "USE THE BRAINS THAT GOD GAVE GEESE" which i think means geese don't have very big brains but its still more brain than you currently appear to be using.
Actually I like Bottom too, because he's funny and so wants to be accepted. I accept you Bottom, simply because your name makes me giggle and I've always liked donkeys (NOT as much as Titania does I must stress) they're cute and I have a good mind to become incredibly wealthy and leave all my money to them just to piss my family off.
