Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream by City Theatre Company
by Michael Meigs

Yes, as Austin arts doyen Robert Faires commented perhaps ten years ago, A Midsummer Night’s Dream keeps coming around on perpetual rotation. There’s something about that magic forest, the rude mechanicals, the fairies, love distracted and displaced. It charms actors and audiences of a certain tender age. “Lord, what fools these mortals be!” quoth Puck. I saw the play for the first time in broad daylight in Regents Park, London, and fell permanently under its spell. I guess that—like Peter Pan—I’ve never grown up.

Adam Adolfo directed a Midsummer at City Theatre Austin last month that I was lucky enough to catch during the scant weekend I was home between trips elsewhere. Lingering jet lag may have given it an added boost of enchantment.

Adolfo made the most of City Theatre’s intimate space, reminding us of the piece’s theatricality.  The set wasn’t conventional. it represented a busy, messy backstage crowded with miscellaneous gear and costumes, and there was an enormous full moon at deep stage center. A few actors were casually engaged with their own business or chatting with one another, blissfully ignoring the audience  that was filing into the ranks of seats. Several  of the company then gathered at stage center, squatting or lying full length as they conscientiously applied white polish to the nails of a burly bearded actor in light-colored short overalls and cap pulled low over brightly made-up eyes.

That was our introduction to Taylor Lueckenotte as Puck, the spirit who would set the story spinning and tilting through the evening. Also onstage was Jenna Clayborn, the slim, handsome woman who would become Bottom the weaver. Once the action commenced, we swiftly realized that Adolfo’s cast was, appropriately, mostly composed of fresh faces, the majority probably relatively recent college graduates. One exception was Sue Breland as a confident, guitar-strumming, authoritative Peter Quince, organizer of the rude mechanicals rehearsing a piece they hoped to present at the matrimonial celebrations of Theseus, Duke of Athens.

Then came the familiar setup and intrigue: Michael Davis as Egeus complains to Theseus the prince (Jaden Perry) that his daughter Hermia (Sydney Crowe) refuses to marry his chosen eligible bachelor Demetrius (Jesse Ray Payne) but wants her beloved Lysander (Ren Powers) instead. The prince sides with dad. The surprise comes when Crowe and Powers are left together onstage — they swing into the love ballad “Nothing’s going to stop us,” a 1987 top-of-the-charts hit by the rock band Starship.

That moment gave a hard knock to my suspension of disbelief. Was this LaLa Land? I asked myself. Or Barbie, the movie?

I should have expected it, of course, for last year while directing Sagittarius Ponderosa for Ground Floor Theatre, Adolfo cleverly threaded together disparate scenes with sudden, brief ecstasies of contemporary pop music. And as this Midsummer proceeded, the new approach established its paradigm, rationale and charm, especially given the director’s apt choices of tunes. Movement and choreography accompanied and enlivened the story (I loved those four fairies shaking it up like dancers at a beach party).

You’ll remember that the love potion which Puck generously though mistakenly applies completely redirects the sentiments of the couple who wind up in the woods. And Bottom is transformed into an ass, luxuriating in the attentions of these color-coded dancing faeries. All comes out well in the end (surely I don’t have to unravel it for you), and Adolfo’s Midsummer is a charming celebration of the familiar fantasy text.

Quick notes, scratched up a week after closing:

Juni Nguyen ís gorgeous and confident as Hyppolyta, the Duke’s fiancée and Queen of the Amazons, and she’s luscious, throaty, and enchanting as Titania, queen of the faeries.

Playing opposite her as the Duke and Oberon, the king of the faeries, Jaden Petty often works too hard. No royal need ever shout; whether duke or king, the character is endowed with authority that’s imposed by presence.

Jenna Clayborn was an energetic delight as Bottom the weaver. Her diction was crisp and her actions sharply defined. Presence she had by the bucketful, and she landed the gags and jokes precisely.

Adam Adolfo made this silly, eternal text come alive, especially for any who hadn’t had to trudge their way through the authorized, annotated editions. He did more than shoehorn the musical numbers into the plot; he also pirated appropriately from elsewhere in Shakespeare (notably the entirely appropriate “If music be the food of love, play on!” from Twelfth Night and from Shakespeare’s droll, comic Sonnet 130 parodying overblown love poetry).  All in all, a sparkling achievement!

EXTRA

Click to view the program for City Theatre's A Midsummer Night's Dream

A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare
City Theatre Company