A Midsummer Night's Dream: Into The Woods

It's no secret that I enjoy indulging in a cocktail or two before an evening at the theatre, but perhaps a nice cup of herbal tea would be the more appropriate prelude to director Tina Landau's celestially seasoned production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, now playing at The Paper Mill after the co-production began its run at Princeton's McCarter Theatre. Collaborating with the musical group GrooveLily, Landau has mounted a sweet, ethereally minded interpretation of Shakespeare's romantic fantasy that offers a bit of New Age atmosphere, a bit of knockabout comedy and a lot of well-built boys wearing nothing but bikini briefs and body glitter.

The complex plot of this romantic farce revolves around three sets of characters. Young Athenian Hermia is being forced by her father to marry bad boy Demetrius, who has seduced and dumped Hermia's friend, Helena. Lysander is the man of Hermia's choosing and the two of them head to the next town to elope, by way of an enchanted forest. Demetrius sets out after them and Helena sets out after Demetrius.

But the four are unaware that they've become innocent bystanders in a quarrel between Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of Fairyland. In a comedy of errors (wait, wrong play) involving Oberon's sprightly assistant, Puck, and a magic flower that can make people fall in love, couples are matched and mismatched.

Meanwhile, a ragtag collection of local amateur actors has been preparing a dramatization of the tragic romance of Pyramus and Thisbe for the celebration of Duke Theseus' marriage to the Amazonian Hippolyta. The hammy Bottom, the weaver, has been making such an ass of himself in rehearsals that Puck decides to work a bit of magic and literally… Oh, do I really have to explain all of this?

Since GrooveLily's program bio tells us the trio "inhabits that contemporary space where creative musicians ignore the boundaries laid down by words like rock, folk, jazz and pop", I really have no way of describing the rock/folk/jazz/pop score they've composed for this production, except to say that much of it is that New Age-y sound generally associated with unicorns, meditation candles and yoga classes. It's quite pleasant and relaxing. The play begins with the three of them (Brendan Milburn, Valerie Vigoda and Gene Lewin, who double as actors in the theatre troupe scenes) falling asleep at their instruments, suggesting that what we're watching is their collaborate dream. The actors sing their lines at selected moments, which sometimes works extremely well and other times gets in the way of Shakespeare's poetry. Their rock-operetta tunes for Pyramus and Thisbe, played out like a romance between Elvis Presely and RuPaul, is very funny, but Oberon's beautiful speeches and incantations are musically interpreted in cold, dark tones that diminish the dazzle of the language.

Jay Goede, as Oberon (he doubles as Theseus) seems stuck in a dreary, emotionless interpretation as relegated by the music. Likewise, Ellen McLaughlin as Titania (doubling as Hippolyta) leans too much on the nasty side. Thus the fairy scenes are pretty much handed to Guy Adkins, whose Puck, looking a bit like a bartender at Splash wearing nothing but red and black briefs, is sweetly happy-go-lucky and played with an impish sense of humor and light-footed grace.

Lea DeLaria does some superior clowning as Nick Bottom, reminding me quite a bit of Jackie Gleason in his prime. Though the musical adaptation plays to her jazzy singing talents, she never overwhelms the material in her showy role. Demond Green, as the cross-dressing actor Francis Flute who plays Bottom's romantic interest in the play within the play, matches her with broad comic strokes of his own.

The standout of the romantic foursome is Brenda Withers, who may play Helena as physically gawky, but whose tongue handles her character's humor quite trippingly. William Fowler is a smarmy Demetrius and James Martinez and Stacey Sargeant are nicely sincere as Lysander and Hermia. Landau does find an excuse for the two fellas to strip down to their skivvies, like Puck.  In fact, there's barely a male in the cast whose chest isn't exposed at one time or another. But it's all rather innocent family fun.

The production is visually sumptuous with Louisa Thompson (sets), Scott Zielinski (lights) and Michael Krass (costumes) creating elegantly white courtroom scenes and dreamily sensual forest locations. Aerial designer Christopher Harrison has the fairies, a fine and well-chiseled group of fellows, athletically maneuvering about a series of vertical steel poles to simulate flying.

Though the evening sometimes seems a bit more like GrooveLily's A Midsummer Night's Dream than Shakespeare's, their music sometimes overshadowing the text, there's a good deal of merriness and whimsy to enjoy in this lovingly stylized production.

Photos by T. Charles Erickson

Top: Ellen McLaughlin and Jay Goede

Center: Guy Adkins

Bottom: Lea DeLaria