Review
A Midsummer's Night Dream
Delacorte Theater
August 15, 2007
VanLoan
vanloan@nyconstage.org

The Public Theater billed its two Shakespearean plays this season "the Summer of Love" (in possible synergy with the retrospective of all things counterculture circa 1967 at the Whitney Museum). With this lackluster production of A Midsummer's Night Dream following the problematic Romeo and Juliet, the season would have more aptly named "the Summer of Mediocrity".

Tony Award winning director Daniel Sullivan seems to be on auto-pilot here; ineptly staging one of Shakespeare's most joyous comedies on the foibles of love and loving. We know we are in for a "bumpy night" when the usually enthralling Laila Robins (as Titania, Queen of the Fairies) makes her entrance screeching like a fishwife. Her opening scene with her King, Oberon (Keith David in absurd Ziggy Stardust make-up) is played at such an aggressive, fever pitch that it sets the tone for the numerous miscalculations that follow. In a rage, Oberon casts a spell on Titania and the four Athenian lovers who gambol in the woods he calls home.

Under Oberon's spell, the four young lovers are all at cross purposes with each other (symbolic of Shakespeare's feeling that love is capricious). Unfortunately, this also characterizes the acting styles as well. As Hermia, Mireille Enos is petulant and whiny. Demetrius, who is in love with Hermia, is played by Elliot Villar with a sort of dorky machismo. Lysander, the object of Hermia's affections is played by Austin Lysy as being distractingly spacey. Only Martha Plimpton rises above this acting menagerie as the wronged Helena. Whether playing the wronged victim or aggrieved suitor, she never wavers in her portrayal and is a joy to watch. She also has the surest command of the Shakespearean prose.

The "rude mechanicals" who are developing the play within the play come off the best. The obviousness of their characters and their rustic 'wisdom' are ideally suited to Sullivan's heavy-handed direction. All are uniformly good but Jay O. Sanders as the blusterous tinker Bottom walks away with all his scenes ( he is later turned into a donkey) and provides the single highlight of the dull evening. The costumes design by Anne Hould-Ward is a mishmash of styles and Eugene Lee's scenic design is, in a word, ugly.

Perhaps, Mr. Sullivan felt that Midsummer needed a more muscular approach after so many lyrical productions. Regrettably, the approach seems to have moved this Dream closer to a nightmare.

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