Ain’t Love Grand When It Happens
Peter Robinson’s review of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Marin Shakespeare Company
To follow the story in A Midsummer Night’s Dream the audience needs to pay careful attention. There are
three main storylines: the tangled love affairs of four young Athenians, a feud between the fairy king and queen, and the rehearsals of a group of amateur actors who prepare a play for Duke Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding. The Marin Shakespeare’s production does a good job at presenting the complexity of these themes and keeps the action moving.
Add to that Puck, the mischievous fairy, introduces magic to meddle with the lovers’ relationships, causing chaos and confusion. Puck (Rob Seitelman), delivers his key line with the gusto it deserves:”Lord, what fools these mortals be!” The play culminates in the resolution of these conflicts and the celebration of multiple weddings.
The Lovers: Hermia, Lysander, Helena, and Demetrius are all intertwined in a complex web of love and infatuation. Hermia loves Lysander, but her father wants her to marry Demetrius. Helena loves Demetrius, but he is uninterested in her. The acting in these relationships underlines the intriguing and ever-changing nature of love and restored my own faith in the creative imagination of dreams. So it is a story of order and disorder, reality and appearance and love and marriage.
This production developed the magic and escapism essential to this play, and I admired the energy of the overall performance. In the dance routines the actors made good use of their knee pads in the skilled choreography.
In the play a group of amateur actors, the “Rude Mechanicals,” add to the comedic mix and eventually present their play during the wedding festivities of Theseus (Johnny Morenoand) and Hippolyta. Steve Price plays a memorable Bottom.
This is an enchanting and entertaining night at the theater and the audience is left with provocative questions about appearance and reality—things are not quite what they seem and how quickly order can change into disorder in a matter of moments. So yes this sixteenth century drama is relevant today.
A tip for older theatergoers attending an evening production, take a blanket as it gets chilly by the second half. I’d support a fund for bringing in outdoor heaters as the play ends close to 10 pm.
The play runs until July 13 at Dominican University.
