Director Rick Dildine's "music infused" interpretation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream emphasizes the play's entertainment value by targeting its humor, adding an expert on-stage bluegrass/country musical ensemble [who also play character roles], and introducing a new character identified only as "Boy" [played on opening night by Griffin Isbell], who at the start of the show enters a large clock-tower attic room, and whose imagination triggers the action of the 400+ year old comedy.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is notable for its lyrical poetry and its intermingling of several plots [youthful romantic couples who challenge patriarchal authority, a Fairy King and Queen whose behavior mimics their earthly counterparts, a mischievous and loyal servant sprite called Robin Goodfellow/Puck, and a naively rambunctious group of coarse actors] that depict and analyze the human need to find love.
But perhaps the ASF Company's finest achievement in this production is their uniform vocal clarity and precision in delivering The Bard's words and verse so that everything [plot, character relationships, themes, humor, et al.] engages audiences' intellect and emotions, and carries them through the complications of The Dream's magic. -- Harkening back to Elizabethan audiences who went to the theatre "to hear a play" as contrasted to modern day audiences who go "to see a play", and productions that hijack words and content in favor of spectacle, loudness, and displays of emotion, it is refreshing to experience a local production that respects the audience's ability and willingness to fully participate through listening and thereby getting the rewards of a satisfying production. -- Notice needs to be paid to Santiago Sosa as the "Voice/Text Coach" for the production, and Melanie Chen Cole's Sound Design that enhances the balance between voice, music, and stage action so we hear every word.
Plot #1: As Athenian King Theseus [Harry Thornton] and his Amazon Queen Hippolyta [Katelyn Call] prepare for their upcoming marriage, Egeus [Greg Thornton] asks the King to intervene in his daughter Hermia's [Sigrid Wise] arranged marriage to Demetrius [Pete Winfrey]; though she prefers Lysander [Louis Reyes McWilliams], while her friend Helena [Jayne McLendon] pursues Demetrius, Egeus asserts his patriarchal right to determine his daughter's husband...or else. -- As Hermia and Lysander plan an elopement to thwart Egeus's demands, Lysander astutely comments: "The course of true love never did run smooth," setting up the many complications to follow.
Plot #2: A group of working-class craftsmen meet to rehearse a play they hope to perform at the wedding feast for Theseus and Hippolyta. The play is called The Most Lamentable Comedy and Most Cruel Death of Pyramus and Thisbe, and as Peter Quince [Ben Cherry] explains and distributes the roles to Snug [Jo Brook], Starveling [Zack Powell], Flute [Woodrow Proctor], Snout [Oriana Lada], and Bottom [Matt Lytle], it is clear that the audience can anticipate a raucous display in their production.
Plot #3: In the woods outside Athens, the Boy and Puck [Benjamin Bonenfant] introduce the feuding Fairy King Oberon [Chauncy Thomas] and Fairy Queen Titania [Mia Ellis], and Oberon's plot to bewitch Titania with Puck's help. -- It is here where the young lovers have escaped the authority of parent and King, and it is here where the "rude Mechanicals" come to rehearse their play...and so, inevitably, the three stories intertwine with many expected and surprising results.
Lots to unravel, what with magical tricks at the expense of others, deceptions, mistakes, cross-purposes, and all in the pursuit of love.
The four principal women [Hippolyta, Titania, Hermia, Helena] share a sense of feminist independence, making their relationships with their men a bit more of a challenge than in many previous productions, and highlight the comic possibilities of the battle between the sexes; while the men [Theseus, Oberon, Lysander, Demetrius] strut their masculinity, they learn to compromise.
Though Titania is tricked into falling in love with Bottom [who has had an ass-head placed on him by Puck], she and Oberon eventually come to terms in their dispute, and Bottom is restored to his normal human condition in time to perform Pyramus and Thisbe after the wedding ceremony. -- And it is this performance that brings the play to its penultimate moment. The outrageous impersonations on the play-within-a-play allow us all to reflect on Puck's pronouncement: "Lord, what fools these mortals be."
All along, with Puck as his guide, the Boy comes to realize that love takes many forms, and that friendship and trust are high on the list, so he can return to the world below the attic, and we can leave the theatre with a new appreciation of the importance of love in our lives.
