Review of 'A Midsummer Night’s Dream'
Barrett Newkirk
Mainstage Theatre’s first go at Shakespeare hopefully won’t be
its last.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was a smart choice by director Rick
Vale. Not only is the play one of the Bard’s most accessible,
it’s also still funny after 500 years.
But there were still risks. Could volunteer actors handle the
script? Would the local audience even care?
The cast and crew should be proud of their work. Let’s hope
people go see it.
Anyone who thinks Shakespeare isn’t his thing should accept this
challenge to see “Midsummer.” For $10 (less than a movie and
popcorn at Mounds Mall) you see 25 live people performing an
indisputable classic. It has to be better than the latest Ben
Stiller vehicle, “The Heartbreak Kid.”
Don’t assume the cast just floats through the poetry of
“Midsummer.” It is possible to stink at Shakespeare, but
Mainstage gets it right. Vale sets the play in an Indiana
backyard where a girl dreams all of the action while dozing on
her back porch. Vale’s design of the garden and his stage
lighting give the show a solid, very professional looking
presentation, and the three original songs he wrote add yet
another small layer of intrigue.
The makeup on some of the fairies, however, looks more
amateurish than the staging. The crowns of Queen Titanian and
King Oberon look like they were crafted from paperclips spray
painted gold — not very regal or magical.
The cast of “Midsummer” is diverse in age and experience.
Several Anderson University theater students perform choice
roles, especially Benjamin Titter as a super-hyped Puck.
Brooke Lose gets physical in some scenes as Helena, and overall
she’s lovely as the most tragic player in “Midsummer.”
It’s fun to see different productions of the same Shakespeare
play because every show, sometime different performances of the
same cast, bring out new, never-before-noticed moments.
Monday night, Alicia Bush’s Hermia brought several surprise
moments that caused audible reactions in the audience.
Bush and her cast mates will hopefully surprise a lot of people
with their talents in the coming weeks.
|
Mainstage to tackle
Shakespeare for the first time
By Barrett Newkirk
William Shakespeare has never had a major role at Mainstage Theatre.
If he did, it was decades ago and must have been forgettable.
Ask those involved with the company now, and
they’ll say that to the best of their knowledge, Mainstage has never
performed a work by world’s most-performed playwright.
That was until now.
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” opens at Mainstage
on Thursday with a cast of 25 local volunteer actors, some of which
have never before performed Shakespeare.
Those long passages of old English poetry can
test even experienced actors, so Mainstage’s amateurs have had to
push themselves beyond what is normally expected. One actor who had
never acted before even had to withdraw from the cast because the
play was too overwhelming, said “Midsummer” director Rick Vale.
Mainstage will mark its 50th anniversary in
2008.
Last year the company’s board of directors
asked Vale to head a production and to do it cheaply. He said he
immediately suggested something Shakespeare because the 500-year-old
work fell well within the public domain, meaning Mainstage didn’t
have to pay to use the script.
It’s even cheaper if it’s updated, like Vale
has done by putting the cast in modern clothes and spinning it into
the 21st century. His “Midsummer” is set in an Indiana backyard.
That’s where a girl has a dream involving business people, frat boys
and all of Shakespeare’s original fairies.
The words, however, are still from Elizabethan
England. Vale didn’t update the script, but he did make substantial
cuts to put the original three-hour play at under two hours.
“It’s kind of like going through the Bible and
deciding what verses you don’t like,” Vale said.
He expects that at least 50 percent of the
audience will be new to Shakespeare and by cutting outdated jokes
and some unnecessary lines he hopes “Midsummer” becomes more
enjoyable.
But the play’s story line is still complicated,
just as Shakespeare intended.
As a royal wedding between mortals is about to
take place, the king and queen of the fairies are fighting in a
nearby forest with their pixyish servants eager to help. Two pairs
of young lovers and a troupe of actors (all human) are hiding out in
the same forest and accidentally become mixed up in the magical feud
of the fairies.
The Mainstage production keeps all the original
characters and their Greek names, but new props, like cell phones,
might help people relate to the show.
“I would hope there is a freshness to the
production for people who have seen it,” Vale said, “but a good
introduction for people who haven’t.”
Productions of Shakespeare that keep his words
but change the time period are common. The 1996 film “Romeo +
Juliet” put guns in the hands of rival gang members, and “Midsummer”
seems to be a popular one for remakes as well.
The play’s romantic tiffs, humor and range of
roles make it a good choice for a small company like Mainstage. And
like a lot of Shakespeare, the themes don’t loose their potency,
Vale said.
“That’s what so brilliant about it, people
don’t change,” he said. “We have dramas in the cast playing out like
the dramas on stage.” He declined to give further details, but said,
“There’s always that type of drama when people who don’t know each
other are thrown in to work together.”
Cast member Rhonda Tinch-Mize didn’t know of
any inter-actor intrigues. As for the drama in the play, she said
it’s probably the right mix for the local audience member unfamiliar
with Shakespeare.
“It’s got elements of everything,” she said.
“It’s got love, it’s got jealousy, it’s got a little supernatural
thing going.” Tinch-Mize has relearned the part of Titania,
the fairy queen, which she first played many years ago as a college
student. She loves the part, she said, and hopes that if “Midsummer”
is a hit, Mainstage might consider doing more Shakespeare.
Vale said the company usually doesn’t base its
season on past successes, but he enjoys directing Shakespeare and
would like to do more.
“It brings good actors out for auditions,” he
said.
Even with a second go at Titania, Tinch-Mize
said it has taken time to master her lines.
“It’s challenging to make the language natural
and not sing-songy,” she said. “If you don’t know what you’re
saying, the audience isn’t going to get it either. But once you get
it, it’s a light bulb moment.”
David Whicker’s first role in a Shakespeare
play is Nick Bottom, a blue-collar worker and amateur actor, but
Whicker, 57, has been performing with Mainstage since the early
’80s.
“I’ve wanted our group to do Shakespeare for a
while,” he said. “I think it adds some prestige and credibility for
the theater. It’s a chance to educate the audience and teach them
that Shakespeare isn’t stuffy.”
The script was scary at first, he said, but the
part came together with practice.
“Once I got into it, it wasn’t as difficult as
I thought it was going to be,” he said.
At an evening rehearsal nine days before
opening night, Whicker and many others actors seemed to know their
parts at least through the first half.
Some needed help and occasionally, or
frequently, interrupted their speeches with “Line!” for a quick
prompt.
“It’s a lot harder that what I thought it was
going to be,” Brooke Lose, 20, said. She plays Hermia, a girl
infatuated with a boy who loves someone else.
“Not only am I trying to decipher what she is
saying — that just takes forever — but you have to memorize it, and
find your character’s motivation behind it, and convey that to the
audience. So it’s a four-step process rather than a two-step
process.”
|
