 |
|
Man is but an ass: (l-r) Nigel Gore and
Molly Wright Stuart in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
Fitful
Fantasy
By
James Yeara
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream
By
William Shakespeare, directed by Eleanor Holdridge
Shakespeare and Company, through Sept. 1
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream is the perfect Shakespeare
comedy. For 412 years, the play’s melding of mixed-up lovers,
frustrated nobles, passionate woodland spirits, and earnest
workingmen trying to be actors has pleased audiences. The
mix of poetry and passion, love and foolery, honesty and mockery
is actor- and director-proof; A Midsummer Night’s Dream
provokes empathy, and glimmers of thought, that lay just below
the laughter like magic mushrooms hidden by flora.
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream has been Shakespeare and Company’s
signature piece since the troupe’s inaugural production of
the play at the Mount in 1978. Seven times in 30 years, Shakespeare
and Company have presented the play, the most memorable being
those on the magnificent main stage at the Mount—including
their unforgettable farewell performance there in 2001. From
the deep woods of the outdoor stage Oberon, Titania, and Puck
materialized, or the lovers De metrius, Helena, Hermia, and
Lysander raced, or the workmen and Bottom invaded, or Duke
Theseus and Hippolyta graded. Shakespeare and Company’s productions
discovered new laughs and surprising resonances in the mix
of poetry and passion, love and foolery, honesty and mockery.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream brought out the best in them,
or, perhaps, the play held a mirror up to the troupe, reflecting
its measure.
The first production at the Founders Theatre of A Midsummer
Night’s Dream is serviceable. The play still pleases.
The audience occasionally laughs. The lovers follow each other
across the stage. The fairies pout and pose. The nobles wear
costumes. And the rude workmen wear even more hyperbolically
symbolic costumes while posing. The actors bow. The audience
applauds and leaves.
It’s not that A Midsummer Night’s Dream is overwhelmed
by director Eleanor Holdridge’s romantic-era setting. Jessica
Ford’s costume design gives intimations of Shelley and Keats
to the lovers and the nobles. The white puffy beehive hair
of the fairies suggest the B-52s. Les Dickert’s lighting design
and Kris Stone’s set design create evocative spaces in changeable
hues for the lovers, nobles, fairies, and Athenian craftsmen
to stand. The white pillows scattered about the stage and
the 20-foot-high panels of white shimmery fabric give this
Dream a Sealy commercial quality that would be suitable
for a post-9/11 production. The Founders Theatre’s charms
are used well: The cyc upstage changes colors, shadows are
created, the cast runs around the hallways around the audience,
actors throw open the trapdoor downstage right and drop the
pillows in.
While this Dream isn’t the worst production of A
Midsummer Night’s Dream in the rich history of the Berkshires
(Williamstown Theatre Festival’s self-referential shambles
of 2004 is untouchable), it’s the most flaccid that I’ve seen
at Shakespeare and Company. The hallmark of the troupe has
always been the deep connection to the text, the sense that
the words sprung from the spine; here they’re just memorized
lines. These are glorious lines to memorize, but they deserve
what Shakespeare and Company has made so memorable in the
past: human breath.
|
Site
Search 
