Contemporary Tyrannies in Staging and Reviewing Shakespeare

Borrowing the story from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (itself on loan from Ovid’s Metamorphoses), Alexandru Dabija’s 2009 production at the Odeon Theatre, Bucharest, stages Pyramus and Thisbe not once but four times in a one hour and 28 minutes show. Set on a train platform, with a mock track separating the actors from the spectators (who are seated on the stage throughout), the production, I argue, puts forward a close and cross examination of Shakespeare making.