Review by Arlene McKanic

Photo by Emilie Soffe

A Midsummer Nights Dream
 

     One of the great things about Shakespeare is he’s truly a man for all seasons: Richard III is as great with Ian McKellan playing the title role as a 1930’s Fascist dictator and Romeo and Juliet are just as relevant as two American high school kids. And A Midsummer Night’s dream is just as delightful if it’s played by a bunch of flower draped Vassar coeds or modern day actors in their pajamas. In A.M.L. Entertainment’s version, just closed at the Suffolk Theater, homeless people living under a bridge in Central Park morph into Puck and Titania’s servants, whirligig flowers are made of what look like shiny bits of potato chip bags, Titania’s wings are made of rubbish and her crown is a circlet of plastic forks.

Photo by Emilie Soffe

     The play’s interweaving plots are, as always, thin and shimmery as gossamer. It’s close to the wedding of Theseus, who in this version set in modern day New York, is translated from the Duke of Athens to an Ambassador. He’s marrying Hippolyta, played as a pill popping bundle of nerves by Rebeca B. Miller. The big change is that Egeus, father of the recalcitrant Hermia, is played by a woman, deliberately. Her name is now Egea but her word is still law with regards to her daughter. If Hermia doesn’t marry Demetrius, the chap her mother has chosen for her, she faces death or nunhood.

But Hermia is in love with Lysander, while Helena, Hermia’s childhood friend, is in love with Demetrius, who scorns her.  In the meantime, Oberon, king of the fairies and Titania, his queen, are having a kerfluffle over who gets to keep her slave boy. So Oberon sends Puck, a.k.a. Robin Goodfellow, to bewitch Titania as she sleeps. When she wakes up she’ll fall in love with the first ugly thing she sees, which Oberon thinks will serve her right.

The first ugly thing Titania sees upon waking from her nap is Bottom, whose head has been changed by the impish Puck into the head of an ass. Bottom, by the way, is part of an amateur acting troupe who are trying -- very hard and hilariously -- to put together a play for the Ambassador's wedding.

     As usual, the cast, led by director Jacquelyn Honeybourne, have great fun with this play; more, it’s a sly appraisal of Manhattan’s social strata. Hippolyta and Theseus ( Michael Lutton) are dressed like Upper East side professionals, as is Egea. The lovers are, as Oberon puts it, more “preppie,” and everyone else is sort of down on their luck. Before the play even begins, actors hold up cardboard signs reminding people where the exits are and to turn off their cellphones. While the lovers sleep somewhere near Central Park’s Boat House the fairy folk sneak in and liberate their blackberries, money and watches.

     If the cast has a leader it must be Alice Wiesner’s sensational Puck as she darts all over the stage and cackles, unseen, at all the silliness around her. At one point she puts the lovers to sleep with handfuls of baby powder, which gave the theater a lovely sweet scent. Emilie Soffee and Josh Odsess-Rubin are moving as Hermia and Lysander, while Katie Stults and Will Reid are funny as the spurned Helena and the harried Demetrius. Bottom’s actors (Michelle Silvani, Katherine Booze-Mooney, Michelle Burns, Graham Burk and Sarah Pullman) are fantastic, with Hanlon Smith-Dorsey’s Bottom coming on stage dressed in a ridiculous get up that recalls Caravaggio’s Young, Sick Bacchus.

Burke, who plays Thisbe to Bottom’s Pyramus, wears balloons beneath his/her gown: when Thisbe stabs herself, one of them dutifully pops. Sprays of blood are represented by red confetti. Lutton’s Theseus is less harsh than some Theseuses the writer has seen -- he’s in love, after all -- and Barrie Golden’s Egea acquiesces to her daughter’s wishes, eventually, with a shrug. Titania (Miller, again) and Oberon (Lutton, again) snipe at each other beautifully and her servants, played by Silvani, Booze-Mooney, Burns, Burk and Pullman, serve Bottom so cheerfully that you’d think they’re used to mortals with donkey heads. Props must also go to Dana Sacco’s set design and Allison Krause’s lighting; the production was held in an old, graffiti scarred church on Suffolk Street, and lighting must have been a challenge.
     A Midsummer Night’s Dream sadly, ended its run at the Suffolk Playhouse, 107 Suffolk Street, on December 13.

                                         Christine Jorgenson Revealed

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