Theater Reviews
Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Bernice Kliman (Nassau Community College) Vol 53.2 (Summer 2003): 35, 58
The production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival is a delight, with every piece falling into place. Director Kenneth Albers brings to the stage the magic of parallel lives, running in alternate strands but sometimes eliciting in the characters a shiver of recognition. The craftsmen-players who so admire their colleague Bottom double as Titania’s henchmen (dressed like Mad Hatter figures from Alice in Wonderland), who tend upon him. No wonder this Bottom feels so at home with them.
The tone is set from the beginning in a wordless exchange between Philostrate, Theseus’s Master of the Revels, and his gentlemen-attendants whom he examines for correct grooming; later, the same actors will play Puck and his attendants (Pucksters) and undergo a similar inspection. These two threads cross when Philostrate in the last scene advises Theseus not to select the craftsmen’s play of Pyramus and Thisby: he has seen the play rehearsed and cannot recommend it. On speaking the line, he does a double take, as if to say, “I saw it rehearsed? When was that?” It was as Puck, of course, that he saw the rehearsal, but Philostrate does not really know that. These links are light as gossamer, delicately connecting the two main settings Court and Woods of this multi-plotted play.
Sandy McCallum is the most plodding Puck in memory, a sprite who would rather send out his helpers than go whizzing around the world himself. And yet, when Oberon commissions him to bring the herb that will bewitch Titania, Demetrius and Lysander, he is the only Puckster who has the correct flower. (One Puckster comes with a huge carrot, one sight gag among a very few.) In case you have ever wondered how one little flower can infect so many, this pansy is big enough to infect a regiment and a musical tone at the moment of application assures us of its efficacy.
What the director earns from this casting and directing of Puck is a sharpened focus on the young lovers. Since they appear in every act (of the five marked in the Folio), Shakespeare seems to have wanted them to dominate. The casting is brilliant. Shakespeare must have designed the roles of the young women with specific boy actors in mind because he seldom is as specific as he is here about their body build and personality. He calls for: a Hermia who is short yet fierce and a Helena who is tall and timid. For once, the actors looked precisely their parts. Julie Oda (Hermia) is four foot eight; Kim Rhodes (Helena) appears to be at least five foot seven. Both were outfitted with elegant empire gowns, which did not become disordered during their trials in the Woods, a relief to me from the bedraggled and begrimed young women of so many other recent productions. By casting Christopher DuVal as Lysander, who like Hermia wears glasses and is not above middle stature, and Shad Willingham, a very tall slender youth as Demetrius, the director made the audience see that the proper pairing was Hermia with Lysander, Helena with Demetrius, and we could watch with satisfaction as they paired off appropriately. Other productions, wishing perhaps to show that love is blind, mismatch the lovers. The OSF four contributed more to the production than they are usually allowed, and that added to the magical sweetness of the production. Their speeches sounded fresh and alive.
On the other hand, the craftsmen (and women in this production), like Puck, lend a tone of earthy realism to the proceedings. What pleased me especially is that they did not overdo the hamming. They took themselves seriously and did not make absolute fools of themselves, not as they rehearsed nor as they played their parts at the wedding celebration. There is a tenderness in the regard the men have for Bottom and the respect they have for their leader Quince that keeps them from being utter fools. Like Hippolyta, I was moved to say upon Pyramus’s passionate speech about the supposed death of Thisby, “Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man.”
James Newcomb as Theseus and Oberon, Catherine Lynn Davis as Hippolyta and Titania were the unsteady older couples who, just like the youngsters, needed to move from rancor to reconciliation, and they did so convincingly. Titania’s faeries were played by masses of orange light amidst the green lights of fairyland as we heard the voice of Nell Geisslinger. Only when Bottom needed attention did fairies appear as persons.
A true star of the show was Michael Ganio’s set design which was delightfully enhanced by Robert Peterson’s lighting design. The audience gasped as the marble arches and pillars of Athens transmogrified into the brilliant green lights of the Woods. Gorgeous and instantaneous, it was magic befitting this wonderful play. Because the sets were the same for both Court and Woods, albeit with different lighting, the audience grasped the links between the two worlds, augmented by stage business (as noted above). With a relatively shallow playing area, a grand arch separated the fore-stage from the rear-stage, where Helena lurked in the shadows while listening to the complaint of Hermia’s father Egeus.
To expand the idea of peaceful reconciliation, Albers made several excellent choices besides casting. Because Titania’s Indian boy does not appear on stage, the audience can more readily accept Oberon’s tricking her to win the boy for himself. In other, more edgy productions, a sour note works, but sweetness that does not cloy does not go amiss, at least when it is done as well as it is here. To add to the theme of reconciliation, Egeus does not disappear as he does in the Quarto after Theseus overrules him in act 4 and allows the young people to couple as they please. In the OSF production, Egeus participates in the fifth act celebration and embraces his daughter and her chosen husband.
Shakespeare wove together five plot strands to make one tapestry. The OSF production splendidly added several golden threads to the weave. That excellence, coupled with a perfect summer night at the Elizabethan Stage, made for one of the most satisfying experiences at a Festival season rich in impressive productions.
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Libby Appel, Executive Director Paul Nicholson. Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Elizabethan Stage/Allen Pavilion. June-Oct. 2003. Director Kenneth Albers, Scenic Designer Michael Ganio, Costume Designer Susan E. Mickey, Lighting Designer Robert Peterson, Composer Todd Barton, Dramaturg Barry Kraft, Voice & Text Director Christine Adaire, Movement & Fight Director John Sipes, Stage Manager Susan L. McMillan, Production Assistant Sioux Trett, Assistant Director Noah Tuleja. Cast Theseus and Oberon, James Newcomb; Hippolyta and Titania, Catherine Lynn Davis; Philostrate and Puck, Sandy McCallum; Assistants to Philostrate and Puck, Kyle Barnes, Matthew Brown, Nell Greisslinger (who was also the voice of Titania’s fairy), and S. A. Rogers; Egeus. Richard Farrell; Hermia, Julie Oda; Lysander, Christopher Du Val; Demetrius, Shad Willingham’ Helena, Kim Rhodes; Peter Quince, James Edmondson; Nick Bottom, William Langan; Francis Flute, U. Jonathan Toppo; Tom Snout Gerson Dacanay; Snug, Catherine E. Coulson; Robin Starveling, Suzanne Irving.