Rocking out in a Hipster Haven: A Modern Midsummer Night’s Dream

-Review by Megan Graves

One of my favorite hidden places in Provo is the Castle Amphitheater, so I was excited to see a show there. It has a beautiful view and feels a bit like you’ve been transported back to earlier times, with its quaint turrets, thick rock walls, and tall stone seats. Even though I’d been to the castle before, it was a little tricky to find. But they do have signs directing the way, and since the characters in the play spend most of their time in the forest (or in this modern adaptation, in Central Park), I felt a bit like I was a part of the play while I made my way through the small groves of trees to find the castle.

 

Music and Magic

The play starts out with high energy at a rock concert by “The Duke” Theseus (Archibald Crisanto), in Hipster-era New York. Many of the actors, humans and fairies alike, surprised us by coming out of the audience after the concert as they joined the scene, which was very clever staging, making it more interactive with the audience.

Crisanto entertains with tunes from his guitar throughout the play, singing with his character’s fiancé Hippolyta (Sarai Davila), whose wedding both human and fairy characters come together to celebrate at the end of the play. At one point, when Crisanto and Davila started singing “Stars shining bright above you…” someone in Provo set off fireworks in the distance, and it was almost magical timing, or like a fairy’s doing.

The creativity of music in the show and the mixture of modern songs with old lyrics was one of the major highlights of this particular theater company’s portrayal. Instead of just speaking Shakespeare’s famous ballads from this play, the cast sang the poetic words along to popular tunes instead, like when the fairy attendants (Esther Pielstick, Stacy Wilk, Mccall Iorg, and Sierra Docken – who was a great soloist, by the way) sang their Queen Titania (Peggy Matheson) to sleep with the rock song “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics.

Fairies and Fortune

One thing that might take you aback about the fairies in this particular portrayal is that they are truly mischievous and try to influence behaviors, not just by confusing the four human lovers or by changing a silly man’s head to a donkey (which led of course to many funny Shakespearean puns), but also by controlling movement at times or putting swords in their hands, etc.. I thought this was an interesting choice by the director Kathy Biesinger Curtiss and the actors, and this and other plot twists in the play prompted consideration of the question…how much of our lives is fate, how much is interference by another power, how much is choice, or how much is luck?

Midsummer Mischief: Audience Interaction

As the biggest fairy mischief-maker – who causes the lovers’ confusions and dilemmas in the play – Robin Goodfellow/ Puck (Carter Peterson) has great stage presence and physical comedy that commands the audience’s attention, as well as a no-holds-barred approach when he rocks out and dances to scene transition music, etc. He and other actors in the play, such as Oberon (Rick Macy) and Thisby (Bradley __) in particular, interacted in fun ways with people in the audience, whether it was mimicking the way audience members were sitting or discussing their character’s dilemma to the audience directly.

Walls to Love and Room for Laughter 

While the rest of the play was engaging and entertaining, I have to say the best and most hilarious parts for me were 1) when the characters Helena (Kat Webb), Hermia (Sarah Butler), Lysander (Dallin Halls), and Demetrius (Patrick Kintz) are in a confusing mix of two love triangles and crack the audience up with believable and varied stage combat choreography, and 2) when the silly “google geeks” and “1^st time actors” over-acted their parts with hysterical voices and made the audience laugh over and over, especially with Dane Allred’s portrayal of the Wall and Thisby’s (Bradley _) acting in drag. Their “play within a play” seemed to be scripted by Shakespeare as a satire of his own tragic Romeo & Juliet, and these players stole the show with their dramatic deaths, screams, mess-ups, and sometimes minion-like voices.

Previously, when I had read the play out loud with my sister, or studied the play in class, or even seen it performed professionally, I hadn’t seen the hilariousness or significance these seemingly minor characters were capable of, so I was super impressed at how they kept the audience laughing at their antics. I was told they do some different funny thing every night of the show!

Overall, this production of a Midsummer’s Night’s Dream was so good I would see it again, even just to get more friends to see Shakespeare’s comedy portrayed so well and creatively, and to share a laugh with you.

Educational Entertainment for Adults and Children Alike

Some people are hesitant to go to Shakespeare plays because the old English can make them hard to understand, but with excellent actors – who know the intent and meaning of their lines, and portray their character’s purpose deliberately and with confidence – the plays can be a pure joy to watch, and that was the case here. If you are not familiar with the plot of a Midsummer Night’s Dream yet, it doesn’t matter! Even the children in the audience were cracking up at the on-stage antics and listening intently to the actors. After the play ended my friends and I were still laughing about some of the scenes and discussing Shakespeare’s poignant references to unrequited love, such as Helena’s line in Act II, Scene 1, line 613 when Demetrius refuses her entreaties to come back and love her again:
Ay, in the temple, in the town, the field,
You do me mischief. Fie, Demetrius!
Your wrongs do set a scandal on my sex:
We cannot fight for love, as men may do;
We should be wood and were not made to woo.
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In this play as well as in others, Shakespeare seems more progressive and succinct in portraying women’s plights and cultural inequalities than today’s pundits on the subject.

Character Complexities & Backstories

Helena & Hermia: In my opinion, Helena’s character is the most complex in the show, and Kat Webb did an excellent job of portraying the heartache, longing, and confusion of her character when the man who broke up with her and said he loved another woman suddenly changes his tune and wants to marry her. However she doesn’t portray Helena just as an insecure person; she seems to portray her as someone who knows her worth and therefore fights for the person that she loves and who had loved her previously. The director, Kathy Biesinger Curtiss, said: “Helena is often portrayed as really pathetic – oh woe is me, nobody likes me, etc. – and we think it’s just not a modern idea… Instead, I cast [Kat] in particular so [the character Helena] would have backbone, strength, and really represent the women of today. All that exploration of love in the middle section where [the two male leads] are fighting over [Helena] instead, I think we take that seriously…because this woman [Helena] has a lot of value. So [Kat] plays it very modern, the way she uses the modern language, and the way she steps up and plays a powerful woman.” Helena’s character (and Kat’s portrayal of her) is extremely relatable to those who have felt the pangs and desperation of unrequited love and who strive to achieve their goals despite their insecurities.

The part that I was disappointed by was Shakespeare’s lack of lines for Helena and Demetrius in the closing of the play to show more resolution, and his leaving us wondering whether Demetrius is actually really in love with Helena at the end or if he’s still just under the fairy’s spell. Even if the fairies help open the eyes to people you truly love, then there’s an inconsistency in the plot, because Titania falls in love with Bottom (a stranger and half-man half-donkey) because of Puck’s flower potion. If it was intentionally left unresolved, then it leaves us wondering if the character of Helena is actually following a false hope, which thought diminishes the strong feminist lines she had earlier. Anyway, the point is, though the actors did an excellent job, we left feeling like this part of the plot was unresolved or slightly disappointing, and dare I say this is mostly Shakespeare’s fault.

Hermia also experiences unrequited love for a much shorter length of time (not intended as a joke about the character’s height, by the way, like the bard would do), 😉 and Sarah Butler portrays that sudden confusion and despair of refused love extremely well, even with those scenes being mostly comedic. Speaking of which, Butler’s stage combat dives in those scenes were awesome, and her sitting on Lysander’s foot and refusing to let go was hilarious.

Oberon & Titania: Another interesting artistic choice was the portrayal of Oberon and Titania’s relationship. They start out treating each other like a separated couple barely tolerating each other’s presence when they’re together, and then gradually seem to realize throughout their interactions and the purposeful confusions of the play that they miss each other’s company. I thought this emotional distance and then ensuing gradual realization was excellently portrayed by the actors. The fault I saw was actually in Shakespeare’s too truncated resolution of the couple’s original stated conflict in the script; the original reason for their squabble is resolved somehow off stage and barely gets a mention from Oberon.

Colorful Costumes & a Star-studded Set

I loved the hipster, rocker personas that the characters chose and which were emphasized by their costumes. However, of all the costumes in the play, the fairy costumes fit their characters’ names and personalities the best. Oberon, the dark fairy king, has punk rock eyeliner on and dark feathers on his shoulders. Titania wears a colorful peacock cape, while her fairy attendants all have creative details on their costumes that help you remember their names: Cobweb, Peaseblossom, Moth, and Mustardseed. One audience member, Carrie Cox, who had directed this play previously, thought the play and the costumes were great, but mentioned that it would be nice to have something unifying in the four fairies’ costumes or makeup, etc. to signify they were all Titania’s attendants. All the fairies definitely seemed to have unique personalities, though, which made their characters more interesting than they typically could be portrayed.

The natural outdoor theater background of a sunset and stars, the amphitheater’s castle walls and turrets, and the huge trees helped make the perfect authentic set for a “midsummer’s night,” so there wasn’t much need to add anything else to the set. Other than the paintings of flowers (which seemed a little oddly placed at the top of wooden beams), and weren’t really necessary because of the natural scenic background, the props and set they did use were simple and appropriate, and didn’t detract from the crux of the play.

Critiques

Because the performance was so enjoyable and well played, and mistakes were minimal and could probably have been fixed by now, I hesitate to present any possible semblance of “flouting [any] insufficiencies,” but there were a few small things I (and others) noticed. The donkey head is a difficult costume to make work, and they did a clever job by making it out of cloth just surrounding the actor’s face. However, after Oberon changed back Bottom’s donkey head into his human head again, the donkey head was left on the stage throughout the entire next scene or two, and it was distracting us with the question of whether it was intentional to leave it or not. Sometimes in certain scenes the fairies seemed to be wandering around without purpose, or trying to manipulate the other characters by their arm movements but with nothing happening as a result, especially in the argument scene, so that was a little confusing and distracting.

The stage combat was clever, believable, and funny, but in one or two scenes the constant movement and struggle to the side made it more difficult to either hear the actors’ lines, or to know who exactly they were talking to, because the other actors were constantly moving in that scene and they didn’t always address each other specifically. Lastly, some actors had accents, and while it lent very well to the diversity of background of the characters, the accents were also inconsistent at times, used in one line but not in another.

Thoughts Overall

Overall, the most difficult part of performing Shakespeare was achieved very well – the actors obviously had a backstory, knew the intent and meaning of everything they said, and portrayed it very well to a mixed audience of Shakespeare newbies and aficionados, to make for a pleasant and thought-provoking night of entertainment. It sparked laughter, contemplation, and lively discussions. I highly recommend you go.

Sensitivity rating: When the character Bottom is turned into a donkey, he calls himself an a** a few times. It’s a common word in Shakespeare’s plays that I think is spoken in a hilariously clever way in this play, as well as a common name for a donkey in that time period, but some of you might not want your kids to hear that word. Some of the costumes are rock/punk style with mini skirts, etc., but the actors still kept it appropriate.

Performance Details For When You Go:
Where: Historic Castle Amphitheater, 1300 E. Center St., Provo (behind the State Hospital building).
When: Saturday, Aug. 8, at 8pm, and Sept. 10 – 12, 14 at 7:30 p.m.
Tickets: $7, $5 for seniors, $20 for family pass, $25 for group rate (up to 4 people) and can be bought on this website:  http://smithstix.com/…/venue/castle-amphitheater/venue/16729 
Info: (801) 344-4400, esc_arts@hotmail.com
Other Things to Know: The seats are literally rock hard, so bring a chair to sit in and/or blankets so you can be comfortable. They sell a great variety of concessions for a very reasonable price. Head East on Center Street till the end, then follow the signs to the parking lot just North of the State Hospital.

***Megan Graves has directed, produced, written, and performed in various community plays in Utah (http://www.singforsomething.org/), and also enjoys being a freelance arts critic. She particularly loves watching and performing in Shakespeare plays and in musicals, and is grateful for the chance she had to study and critique theatrical performances in London for 7 weeks in an undergrad theater program at BYU.