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• REVIEW: Reinvented 'Dream' is a Civic tour de farce

  • Printed in the Ann Arbor News on Saturday, November 10, 2001

    By CHRISTOPHER POTTER
    NEWS ARTS WRITER

    Is this a wonderful town or what? In barely more than six months we've been treated to two stupendous productions of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" - productions whose settings weren't merely dissimilar but polar opposites.

    Last April the University of Michigan's Residential College romped up, down, around and through U-M's Nichols Arboretum in an epic-scale rendition of the most magical of Shakespeare's comedies. Now Ann Arbor Civic Theatre has conjured a no less extraordinary rendering despite having perhaps one-100,000th the space in which to perform.

    Which merely lends more proof the maxim that size isn't everything. Civic director Glenn Bugala has packed an amazing amount of imaginative hustle and bustle into a small playing space. He's transported the play from ancient Athens to New York City of the 1930s, primarily Central Park - a safer place in those days to frolic after dark.

    And frolic is the word for "Dream's" Big-Town characters. An opening montage reminiscent of "Guys and Dolls" features not Duke Theseus of Athens, but Don Theseus of Manhattan (Brian Harcourt), new Mafia strongman. The show then segues into a nightclub where swing dancing rules and enmity openly erupts between wealthy young playboys Demitrius and Lysander (Mathias Maloff and Aaron Rabb), both in love with Hermia (Emily Perryman) - a dainty deb dubbed "Rich Swing Kid" in Civic's clever cast list.

    Thanks to the pantomime form, a great deal of Shakespeare's plot is laid out before a single word is spoken. And when the dialogue finally kicks in, it's spoken in NYC accents worthy of Damon Runyon. In an inspired move, Bugala has recast Egeus - in the original "Dream" Hermia's tyrannical yet none-too-interesting father - into Hermia's tyrannical and mesmerizing mother, lent trumpeting gangland fury by Susie Berneis in the show's best performance.

    Yet there's so much to praise in this madcap "Midsummer" that's the epitome of a group triumph. Harcourt makes a wonderful Don, both rough-hewn and debonair in the Robert Montgomery mold. Likewise Marihelen Hemingway as Theseus' wife-to-be Hippolyta, ex-spouse of the gang kingpin Theseus has just rubbed out.

    Bugala attempted to pattern much of "Midsummer" on screwball comedy of '30s Hollywood, and has succeeded perhaps beyond his wildest dreams. Nerdy Demetrius and suave Lysander are uproariously funny antagonists as they shove, punch, wrestle and pratfall their way in pursuit first of Hermia, then of Helena (Anna Kladzyk) in a magnificent riot of physical comedy that marvelously mates with the Bard's hilarious lovers'-quarrel dialogue. If Kladzyk's panicked, fast-talk Helena seems just a tad out of the general uproar, it's only because she's not as physically incorporated into the mismatched melee as the others.

    Certainly not like Perryman, who as baby-faced spoiled brat Hermia is fantastically funny, a whining, yammering composite of every wayward heiress who ever stumbled her way through a Howard Hawkes or Preston Sturges film farce. Retreating with Demitrius into Central Park with a four-piece luggage set, Hermia spends the rest of her nocturnal odyssey making damn sure she doesn't lose a single suitcase no matter what might befall her.

    "Dream's" out-of-work Mechanicals are a zany-looking lot resembling living cartoons. When they stage "Pyramus and Thisby" for the Don's wedding, they appear to be wearing crazy costumes atop already-crazy costumes, to no one's unhappiness. Everyone does his share, with Jon Elliott a boomingly vain Bottom, nearly outdone by Andrew Jentzen's huge yet cowardly Snug the Joiner.

    If I don't say much about the play's other world - the Spirit Kingdom ruling Central Park - it's because their transformation into Native-American spirits, Manhattan's original rulers, doesn't quite come off despite Joan Korastinsky's gorgeous costumes and masks and a great score based on Native musical themes. Perhaps this injection of historical oppressionis a shade too serious for an otherwise wild and wacky show.

    Still, it's a glorious kind of concept, as is Bugala's nervy last scene: The Mechanicals, post-"Pyramus and Thisby," break into a high-kick chorus line, inspiring a reprise of dancing (set to Benny Goodman's "Sing, Sing, Sing") that serves to smash both Athenian and Manhattan class barriers to smithereens. Not so the Lenape dance that followed, yet it was, to borrow from the Bard, "very notably discharg'd." Which is the very least one can say for this unforgettable show.

    "A Midsummer Night's Dream" runs 8 p.m. tonight and Nov. 16-17, and 2 p.m. Sunday and Nov. 18, at Ann Arbor Civic Theatre, 408 W. Washington St. Tickets are $16 general, $14 students/seniors. For details call 971-2228.