A Midsummer Night's Dream

It's one of Shakespeare's best-beloved comedies, a tale of romance and magic and adventure and rhyming iambic pentameter. It's sweet and silly and frothy and innocent, a love story appropriate for all ages. What's not to love in A Midsummer Night's Dream? In the script, rather little. In the new production courtesy of ShakespeareNYC currently at Theatre Row, a bit more. Passionless and rather wan in its presentation, this production struggles to bring Shakespeare's magically matched heroes and heroines into the modern age, but only gives us shadows of what could have been. Under Beverly Bullock's dull direction, one of Shakespeare's most deliriously magical comedies feels rather like a soda gone flat.

The production shows quite a few strokes of brilliance, not the least of which is Bullock's obvious great respect for the source material. The play, though set in the present, is straightforward and faithful to the text, without any of the adapting or tampering that so often try to fix what isn't broken. And the costumes, some of which were rented from the TDF Costume Collection, are the very definition of creativity: black t-shirts and jeans for the mortals, psychedelic colors for the fairies– right down to their pseudo-neon wigs. It works very nicely, although it is rather sad that we need costumes to differentiate between mortals and fairies instead of strong characterization. John La Course's set is similarly simple and effective, and functions just as well as an Athenian court and the magical forest nearby. With such good intentions, it is doubly tragic that the end result should be so unmoving.

The attractive young members of the ensemble clearly have a strong knowledge of the language of the play, but rarely get beneath the surface of the words. By and large, they don't strike any sparks with each other, which rather negates the entire point. These characters are ruled by their passions, forgoing both family and community to have those they desire. None of the lovers show much chemistry, however, and if their pratfalls and physical comedy are cute, they do little to bring the overwhelming emotion of the text to the stage. There are some chuckles, but none of the real laughs the play could have.

Fortunately, Nicholas Stannard and Benjamin Rishworth, as Peter Quince and Nick Bottom, respectively, bring some much needed energy to the stage. With charm and charisma, they make their all-too-few scenes the comic highlights of the play, with all the energy the rest of the evening lacks.

There are some clearly talented people involved with this production, but even their best efforts can't quite make it all fly. May their next efforts have better results.

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