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.