Geva Theatre Center is ending its 40th season in Rochester, NY with an elaborate, very pleasing production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream.Co-directors Mark Cuddy, Geva’s artistic director, and Skip Greer, artist in residence and director of education, keep the focus clear on the three worlds of the Court: the nobles in the Palace, the Fairy Kingdom in the forest, and the “rude mechanicals” from the town, who rehearse their play in the forest, then perform it for the nobles in the Palace. Their intrusion upon one another enriches the storybook romance with zany comedy, human foibles, and magical enchantment.
It’s hard to remember all the varying treatments of this one play I’ve seen in stage and screen versions, film, television, ballets, modern dance works, and even an opera. One brilliant variation was Peter Brook’s Royal Shakespeare Company “Dream,” which substituted the actors’ performing magic (especially circus tricks) for the mystical magic of fairyland legend. The set looked like a squash court: all white with no ceiling, two doors, gymnastic equipment, and a padded mat floor. Both swinging on trapezes 15 feet above the stage, Oberon, the fairy king, handed his fairy assistant Puck a magic flower which was a plate spinning on a stick, and ordered him to fly across to the top of the stage and exit to enchant the fighting lovers. But that approach did little for the comic tradesmen who were preparing their rudimentary “Pyramus and Thisbe” pageant for the lovers. This version gets it right, even reversing the opening scenes to begin with those foolish performers, thus emphasizing how theatrical and funny this romantic fantasy is.
So we begin with the patient Peter Quince, a carpenter who will write and direct their performance, telling his fellow workers what roles they must play. Bottom, the weaver, will play Pyramus but obstreperously wants to show off and play all the roles. Flute, who mends bellows, is aghast to learn that he must play Thisbe, a woman (he has “a beard coming”). Starveling, a tailor, will play the Moon. Snout, a tinker, will play the Wall. And Snug, a joiner, who has trouble learning lines, will fortunately need only to roar as the Lion.
We laugh at these dopey characters; but soon we will laugh with them; and we will come to love them. Shakespeare usually makes fun of the “players” he has in many plays, sometimes seeming to lecture them, as in Hamlet’s instructions to the Players. But he still treats them with affection, liking their developing camaraderie and admiring their anxious desire to please.
Then we get the plot set-up at Court. After the distinguished Lord Egeus gets Duke Theseus to approve his demand that his daughter Hermia marry her father’s choice, Demetrius, and forsake her love for the equally young, handsome, well-placed suitor, Lysander, the Duke informs Hermia that the law leaves her a brutal choice of obeying or death -- or else chastely spending her life in a convent. So Hermia and Lysander plan to escape and marry elsewhere. Demetrius had earlier won the love of another young court beauty, Helena, who still loves him; so she reveals the elopement plot and tags after Demetrius into the woods to pursue the fleeing lovers.
All this is distraction from the main court business, the marriage of Duke Theseus and his conquered love, the Amazon Queen Hippolyta, who privately suggests sympathy with the young women. And we’re off to the woods for comic chases, love scenes, derring do, and some unexpected magical complications.
The Forest is actually the realm of the Fairy Folk, and their love conflict is a battle between the jealous Fairy King, Oberon, and his queen, Titania, who has just possessed a “changeling boy” that Oberon wants in his retinue. The comic battle between their followers peaks with Oberon’s sending his mischievous servant Puck to find a magical flower and squeeze its love-potion juice into the sleeping Titania’s eyes, so that she will become enamored of the first creature she sees upon awakening. (He hopes to make her fall in love with a monster.)
When Oberon sees Demetrius pushing away the pursuing Helena, he instructs Puck to make them fall asleep and to put the flower-juice also in the young Athenian male’s eyes. But after Hermia makes the horny Lysander lie down far away from her and they sleep, Puck picks the wrong suitor and uses the flower on Lysander, who awakens and sees Helena with newfound passion. Oberon corrects that blunder, but then both young swains are chasing after Helena, who believes that they mock her. Lysander cruelly rejects Hermia, who is bewildered, then furious; and Helena thinks Hermia is “in on the joke” and also deliberately tormenting her. Both men fight and so do both women. The four lovers now perform a mad scherzo, running around in pursuit of each other, challenging and fighting. Mostly they are led astray and exhausted and comically frustrated by the mischievous Puck.
In parallel comedy, the foolish tradesmen-players met in the forest, try foolishly to rehearse, and then panic and flee after Puck enchants Bottom and puts a donkey’s head on him. That amusing transformation sets up both Bottom’s hilarious musings about his sudden passion for eating straw and Titania’s awakening from her sleep after Oberon uses the love-flower on her, so that she sees a creature with an ass’s head and man’s legs and falls passionately in love.
Jump to morning and Puck’s restoring Bottom and the four exhausted lovers. Oberon restores and has a loving reconciliation with his queen, Titania. Bottom returns to his worried friends, and they get their silly pageant together. The two young noble couples marvel at their forest “dream” and head back to the wedding.
Of course, the Duke orders a three-couple wedding and placates Hermia’s father. The outrageously silly playlet of “Pyramus and Thisbe” amuses the noble celebrants. Everyone heads off to bed, and the fairies show up to bless the Palace and its inhabitants, and perhaps all of us.
In this production the variations are much of the fun. Traditionally, Theseus and Oberon and also Hippolyta and Titania are played by the same actor and actress. Most often I’ve seen Theseus played as a somewhat stiff-backed authoritarian and Oberon as a more playful, sexy fantasy figure – usually the most beautiful, sexiest male onstage. Keith Hamilton Cobb somewhat reverses those approaches, perhaps reflecting his costuming: his Theseus is commanding, but decidedly ardent toward Hippolyta, rather young looking, and very handsome. His dreadlocked, weirdly garbed Oberon is certainly mischievous, but also more cranky and comic than menacing when flouted, and more quirky than majestic until he too is erotically charged when he reconciles with the Fairy Queen. Carly Street is less varied in her Hippolyta and Titania, both more regal and then amusing than glamorous and enchanting.
Puck is usually played very young and adorable and funny, often appealingly cute. George Abud, also in dreadlocks and strangely costumed, does not make Puck seem especially young. But he is both intentionally funny, ironic, and a more forceful presence than usual. He is not a wunderkind inserted among more magical, potent creatures; Abud makes him an almost cynical, witty second-in-command. Both young male lovers – Ian Holcomb’s Demetrius and Sheldon Best’s Lysander – are adorable physical comics nicely differentiated in appearance and delivery but equally likable and appealing. Kaliswa Brewster’s Hermia is more romantic and glamorous than most I’ve seen, but hilarious in her fury over being put down as “short” and “little.”
In the same way, Emily Kunke plays Helena as less gawky than many others and more of an ingénue; but she can make Helena lovely and vulnerable, and then makes her impishly funny. Brian O'Connor plays Bottom without the impishness I’m used to; he could be almost irritating with his desire to dominate the play within the play; and his transformation into an “ass” is odd and almost creepy. But he then awakes to such touching wonder that the scene is quite moving; and he “plays” Pyramus like a master comedian. The other “rude mechanicals” are also rather movingly affectionate in their relief at Bottom’s release from enchantment. And they make their performance so entertainingly silly that the snide comments by the nobles about the foolish entertainment they have to sit through would be annoying except that they set up the generously kind response of the Duke and his amused bride.
Ron Menzel is particularly funny as a deliberately campy tragic heroine Thisbe. And Charles H. Hyman’s massive Tom Snout, playing the “Wall,” suggests that a natural dignity can get more laughs than an artificial deadpan. Again, I’m used to a glamorous Oberon and Titania bidding us farewell and an elfin Puck concluding, but these really otherworldly-looking, fairly straightforwardly odd creatures provide a very satisfying ending.
All of those comments bring me to this production’s most odd element: its designs. I really liked the shape and patterns of Jo Winiarski’s scenic designs. The Palace is just handsome drapes and levels and expensive period furniture with gold-framed, red plush cushions. But the forest is a multi-leveled series of structures with cunning little openings and cavelike nooks and crannies that provide many onstage entrances and exits, hiding places, and acting areas. A very artificial-looking moon moves across the stage behind. Creepy looking hanging weeds and climbing fern almost cover the dirt of the rising hills and look infested; and there is more underbrush and ground and grass than any notable trees in this “forest.”
Pamela Scofield’s costumes are assemblages of different periods: when things hot up in the forest, the men wear what look like modern-cut trousers to their calves; and most tops look like blouses or t-shirts. The nobles’ garb is more formal and elegant, but the decorations in colored rings around the lower legs and whatnot seem to be original inventions. And the women wear tights down to just above the toes; all the fairy women are covered from neck to toes, with the toes open. They have feelers on their heads, like insects, and the young, small fairies have little transparent insect wings and green-growing patches on their heads. Puck and Oberon have braided hair and lots of it, making their heads look huge. Oberon’s black, fitted body-cover has a jeweled belt, but the hanging braided rags down his back dress the outfit down. Bottom’s donkey-head is just a hairy bonnet with long ears and an open face. No snout.
I do think that the often dramatic lighting by Ann G. Wrightson of this complex set and rapidly changing action is inventive and often impressive. But the sets and costumes – clearly carefully designed to look mysterious – do not strike me as very charming or beautiful. The idea of this Midsummer Night’s Dream may not be to present a lovely, pretty-pretty world. What it certainly delivers is a world of love, good natured fellowship, magical adventure, and quirky, laugh-out-loud comedy.
