Review Preview: "A Midsummer Night's Dream"

Computer problems delayed this posting a bit, but here's the Review Preview of the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey's annual outdoor show.

Special thanks to Maris Smith of the NJ Theatre Alliance fo her help on my previous post, and thanks to Rick Engler at the Shakespeare Theatre for letting me review a preview. I still got nothing done around the house, but it was a pretty good weekend.

Since it was cold Friday night, I'll remind people to dress accordingly outside, a wrap for cold nights, light for warm, well, you know the drill, but give the weather report a look. And if storms are predicted, give the theater a call. They are well-staffed and very good at taking care of their customers.

Nothing to review this coming weekend so I'm spending it at Sandy Hook and on the golf course. But I'll be checking in during the week as news pops up. As always, no rest for Willie. And no vacation until the end of the month.

If you want to go:
What: “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”
When: through July 22
Where: Greek Theatre, College of St. Elizabeth, 2 Convent Road, Convent Station section of Morris Townhsip
How much: $30, $15 children age 12 or younger, free for children age 5 and under
Info: (973) 408-5600; www.shkespearenj.org

By WILLIAM WESTHOVEN
Staff Writer
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is consistently among the most frequently produced plays every year. So when a professional company pus it on, they usually have to come up with a new twist to put some sizzle in the box office.
Last year, the musical “Midsummer” coproduced by McCarter Theatre and Paper Mill Playhouse took a contemporary route to make it unique. This summer, the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey has taken a more grass-roots route—literally, as it takes “Midsummer” outside to the old-school Greek Theatre on the campus of the College of St. Elizabeth.
This magnificent setting provides spacious lawns for preshow picnics and authentic Greek amphitheatre seating on semicircles of stone and grass “bleachers.” The Shakespeare Theatre brings in a full set to stage a show that shifts in mood as the twilight gives way to darkness and dramatic artificial lighting, which illuminates both the stage and the tall trees in back.
Brian B. Crowe, known for active productions and innovative use of theater space, is the perfect director for this address. He not only sends the magical fairies into the audience to play with the audience, he marches the lovers through as well, at least when they’re not executing slapstick gymnastics onstage.
The young lovers are at first vexed by the laws of Athens, where parental rule is absolute. Hermia (Ka-Ling Cheung) loves Lysander (Richard Dreher) but her father (Darren Matthias) wants her to marry Demitrius (Benjamin Eakley). The Duke (Alvin Keith) sides with dad—Hermia must wed Demetrius or die, so Hermia and Lysander plot a route through the magical forest to freedom. Demetrius pursues them, followed by Helena (Kaytie Morris), Hermia’s plane Jane friend who loves Demetrius in vain.
In the forest, they encounter the invisible fairies, who toy with them even as they bicker amongst themselves. King Oberon (Keith again, elevated by spring stilts) enlists his mischievous aide, Puck (Vayu O’Donnell), to cast a love spell on Demetrius that will make him fall in love with the first person he sees. But Puck confuses the lovers and, soon, both Lysander and Demetrius are drunk with love for the confused Helena, while Hermia seethes with rejection.
Puck also casts the love spell on Titania (lovely Maureen Sebastian), Oberon’s misbehaving queen. She falls hard for Bottom (Michael Daly), a blowhard actor rehearsing a play with a group of equally talent-challenged thespians, who hope to perform for the court.
As is custom in the outdoor space, the text is trimmed to a fast-paced 90 minutes to make it more kid-friendly. Crowe skillfully deletes some of the more dramatic conflicts in favor of the silly fun of Shakespeare’s most original fantasy.
He also puts his cast through lightning-quick costume changes as they transform from lovers and actors into fairies, and back, accomplished in seconds following sprinting exits up the long theater staircases.
They get no rest onstage, as the men toss the petite Cheung around like a drum major’s baton. She fights back, in part by executing the first wedgie I’ve ever witnessed on a professional stage.
The “rude mechanicals” acting troupe also got the crowd roaring with its climactic (and disastrous) performance of the “Pyramus and Thisbe” tragedy. Daly leads the way as Bottom, one of the great comedic parts in the theater world. He’s a barrel-bodied barrel of fun, ably supported by nervous and nearsighted Salvatore Cacciato as Starveling and Patrick Toon as Francis Flute, who suffers the indignity of playing the femme fatale, Thisbe. Nathan Kaufman also broke up the crowd as Snug, whose stage fright compromises his role as a man-eating lion.
As the play’s famous line goes, “Lord, what fools these mortals be.” How foolish it would be to pass on this blockbuster summer comedy, served with style under the stars.