[NEohioPAL] Review of "Midsummer Night's Dream" by Great Lakes Theater

[Bob Abelman]

Great Lakes offers modern, amusing but muddled ‘Midsummer’ 



Bob Abelman

Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal

Member, International Association of Theatre Critics



According to Puck, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream’s” most impish of fairies, “If we shadows have offended/Think but this and all is mended/That you have but slumber'd here/While these visions did appear.”  



Past productions of this play by Great Lakes Theater – and there have been six others, mostly when the company went by the title Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival – tend to take Puck at his word for they are truly hypnagogic affairs. 



For its 2003 and 2010 productions, for instance, the play was transported from the 1590s to the hallucinogenic 1960s, complete with surreal landscapes, period costuming, a Volkswagen Beetle on stage and the interweaving of Beatle’s music to facilitate the storytelling.



Its current incarnation, under Joseph Hanreddy’s artistic vision and direction, is similarly surreal but it places the story and all its lyrical Shakespeare-speak in modern times.  



Not everything works in this production.  But Puck’s play-ending apology accounts for most of these occurrences.  And his earlier observation – “What fools these mortals be” – seems to cover for the rest.



For more of this article, go to www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/.
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