Review: A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at The Acting Company At The Rubicon Theatre

As the southland welcomes a return visit from The Acting Company, things remain as topsy-turvey as they must needs be in the woods of Athens. The company visit is a quick hit, but Risa Brainin’s production of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is the kind of crowd-pleasing, take-no-prisoners experience that audiences should devour. With the play slimmed down to the bone (who needs a bunch of verse or attendant fairies?) and some of the more inventive character doubling you’ll see, a marvelous nine person cast blitzes its merry way through 90 minutes of romance, fairies, hack actors and plenty of laughs.

Those who have clocked the history of The Acting Company will recall that luminaries like Patti LuPone, Kevin Kline, Keith David and Jeffrey Wright have come through its ranks. So keep an ear out for the names of Mallory Avnet, Madeleine Barker, Tay Bass, Christian Frost, Brendan D. Hickey, Sam Im, Angie Janas, Pauli Pontrelli and George Anthony Richardson, and enjoy the living hell out of them while they are doing their work at the Rubicon Theatre.

The curtain rises as it usually does on the court of Athens as Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons (played by Angie Janas) is thinking about her wedding day to Duke Theseus of (Brendan D. Hickey). The captured queen, lovely in a purple gown, carries an infant, presumably her own, and her assessment of Theseus’s vow to wed her in “another key” appears to be amicable. Until her reverie is interrupted by nobleman Egeus (George Anthony Richardson) who petitions the Duke to force his daughter Hermia (Madeleine Barker) to marry Demetreus (Christian Frost). Trouble is, Hermia is in love with Lysander (Sam Im) while the jilted Helena (Mallory Avnet) still carries a torch for Demetrius. Rather than comply with Theseus’ and Egeus’ edicts, Hermia and Lysander flee to the woods with Demetreus in pursuit and Helena pursuing Demetreus.

Which is where things get interesting. These same woods are populated by the feuding King and Queen of the fairies, the trickster fairy Puck (Pauli Pontrelli) and a group of laborers (AKA the Rude Mechanicals) who are rehearsing  a play for Theseus’s wedding. Apart from chief ham Bottom the Weaver (a scene-stealing Tay Bass), this production’s “rude mechanicals” are played by the same wonderfully versatile actors who also play the lovers. So when they’re not being enchanted by fairy spells or falling head over tail in love – often with the wrong person – Barker, Avnet, Im and Frost take on the low comic duties of Tom Snout, Robin Starveling, Peter Quince and Frances Flute.

And they are, to a person, delightful both in the rehearsal and preparation of their entertainment and especially in the execution of said play,  THE MOST LAMENTABLE COMEDY AND MOST CRUEL DEATH OF PYRAMUS AND THISBE. Don’t get me wrong. Within the scope of DREAM, the four lovers have plenty of appeal (even though the characters of Demetrius and Lysander tend to be largely interchangeable), and a great dust-up scene. But if you want to make your Shakespearean comedy bones, in this play, you want to be Pyramus and Thisbe-ing it. This lucky quartet of actors gets to have it both ways.

So it goes that Frost can shine both as a confused, put-upon Demetrius and as Peter Quince, the even more put-upon director of this mess. Wearing big colorful sneakers and with a face full of hope, Avnet is a winning Helena and, later a spaced out and slightly belligerent Starveling/Moon in PYRAMUS AND THISBE, who just wants to get his damned intro out there. Im injects plenty of laughs into both the bewitched Lysander and Flute/Thisbe. And Barker’s impassioned but not too fiery Hermia bears no resemblance to Snout the Tinker who is just so pleased to be playing the Wall that separates Pyramus from Thisbe. Add in a strutting Bass as Bottom/Pyramus and Richardson playing Snug the Joiner and the Lion, and you’ve got a mixture worth savoring.

Brainin’s insight and creativity manifests even further in the fairy kingdom. Instead of the more frequent doubling of Oberon/Theseus and Hippolyta/Titania, Janas moves from Hippolyta to Queen Oberon. Hickney’s King Titania, meanwhile, is the fairy lord who won’t A. give up his child to Oberon and B. therefore ends up under an whereby he falls in love with Bottom sporting an ass’s head. Although swaths of some of their more sumptuous monologs have been trimmed, Janas and Hickney are both more than solid. This may well be one of the more Hippolyta-centered DREAMS you’ll see. As Brainin intelligently writes in her program intro, she views the play as Hippolyta’s dream. Artfully employing a forest of crepe paper flowers, scenic designer Tanya Orellana transforms the stage into an enchanted wood.

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