[NEohioPAL] Review of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at GLTF

[Bob Abelman]

GLTF's 'Midsummer' a dreamy production

 

Bob Abelman

News-Herald, Chagrin Valley Times, Solon Times, Geauga Times Courier

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics

 

This review appeared in the News-Herald 5/7/10

 A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of Shakespeare's earliest works and one of his most fanciful comedies.  It is an absolutely delightful diversion about two young couples in love with the wrong partners, who venture into woods populated by mischievous fairies and fall prey to their manipulations of the human heart.

The playwright's pretense is that all this is but a dream; a carefree charade that allows for mortals to mingle with pixies and for all sorts of absurdities to seem commonplace.  In fact, the play closes with a crafty reminder of this (as if the play's title were not enough) by Puck, the most impish of the fairies, who states: "If we shadows have offended/Think but this and all is mended/That you have but slumber'd here/While these visions did appear."  

This pretense is fully embraced and re-envisioned by director Charlie Fee in his Great Lakes Theater Festival production of this play, which is a reprisal of his 2003 presentation.   Fee transports this 1590s reverie to the 1960s, where the dream is more hallucination, complete with surreal landscapes by Gage Williams, period costuming by Star Moxley and an interweaving of Beatle's music to facilitate the storytelling. 

This year's version has not lost the charm or unabashed playfulness of the 2003 adaptation, despite changes in its venue and casting.  

Gone is the cavernous Ohio Theatre staging, replaced and enhanced by the intimacy that the Hanna Theatre affords-including the use of aisles to extend the play's action into the audience.  

Gone, and missed, are actors Andrew May and Sara Bruner, who so understood and mastered Shakespeare's words that the classic roles they embodied seemed to have been written specifically for them.

Fortunately, this year's rendering brings back many superb, well-seasoned performers and introduces some very talented members to complete the repertory company. 

Newcomers Gisela Chipe and Kevin Crouch bring a subtle silliness that plays perfectly in this production and are wonderful as the lovers Hermia and Lysander.  Dane Agostinis as Demetrius, who also loves Hermia, and Lina Chambers as Helena, who adores Demetrius, are also quite good. 

Aled Davies once again takes on the duo roles of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, and Oberon, the King of the Fairies, and does so with perfection.  Lynn Allison nicely complements Davies as both Hippolyta, who is betrothed to Theseus, and Titania, the Queen of the Fairies.

Introduced early and reappearing intermittently throughout the play is an incompetent and outrageously funny troupe of artisans who are preparing for a performance at Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding.  Their lead player is Bottom, played by the outlandish David Anthony Smith.  Smith never misses an opportunity to milk a moment for comedic effect and, as he has done in so many past productions, always hits his mark with remarkable precision.

Rounding out the rest of the troupe, and also doubling as fairies, are veteran GLTF performers Dudley Swetland, M.A. Taylor, and Lynn Robert Berg, who are joined by Erin Childs and Mitch McCarrell.  Collectively, they raise the level of absurdity in this production and, in their enactment of the wedding play in the final scene, are brilliant.

Eduardo Placer is a charmer in the pivotal role of Puck, the "shrewd and knavish sprite" whose pranks and misdeeds set this play's insanity in motion.  His physicality captures all that is playful and marvelously mischievous in this character.

Some theater purists may balk at the GLTF's reconstruction of A Midsummer Night's Dream (and, at least with regard to the insertion of some contemporary phrases into Shakespeare's sacrosanct prose and poetry, are justified).

Some GLTF faithful may find it necessary to make comparisons with the 2003 version.

This is a shame, for the current production certainly stands on its own merits and is a thoroughly delightful and enjoyable mid-Spring night's diversion.

 A Midsummer Night's Dream continues in repertory with Bat Boy: The Musical through May 16 at PlayhouseSquare's Hanna Theatre in downtown Cleveland.  For tickets, which range from $15 to $49, call 216-241-6000 or visit www.greatlakestheater.org.

 
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