And Now, Something For the Lovers
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Soulpepper Theatre Company
The National Post
Soulpepper's A Midsummer Night's Dream contains one scene that's better done than in any other production I've seen. It comes after the big four-way lovers' quarrel. To stop the two men, Lysander and Demetrius, from killing one another, Oberon, king of the fairies, orders Puck to fog up the Athenian wood so that they'll get lost and pass out. This midsummer's night has already been less vernal and more nocturnal than any other Dream I recall; in this realm, Oberon's sovereignty is signified by his possession of a magic wand with a flashlight at each end. The production boasts a corps of actors who may at any moment be drafted to play fairies or trees or bushes or fairies pretending to be trees or bushes. Puck now marshals these forces in sinister shifting formations that obstruct and baffle the young men while making their predicament perfectly clear to us. We feel for and with them.
They deserve it. In this production not only do the two guys outshine their girls, which is practically unheard of, but they also emerge as the most vital characters in the entire piece, which is absolutely unheard of. Mike Ross is a preppy Lysander who presents himself sullenly, hands in pockets, at the Athenian court, before blossoming as a wide-eyed, buttermouthed amateur Lothario in the forest. Brendan Wall is a frustrated jock of a Demetrius, increasingly incensed at what a cad he's becoming. Opposite in temper, they're alike in their quicksilver communication of what they're saying, thinking and feeling, a quality mostly absent from Abena Malika's Hermia, who is over emphatic, and Karen Rae's Helena, who's the reverse. Ross, whose various talents seem to include bringing unpromising Shakespearean young men to life (he was a notable Oliver is As You Like It), was also responsible for the production's sound score, which manages to be both omnipresent and unobtrusive. And he may have had an additional influence on the show as a whole, since a cryptic program note credits him and the Soulpepper Academy (whose alumni make up most of the cast) with workshopping the production's "conceptual development."
I'm not sure, though, just what that concept has developed. Maybe it's making Puck and the fairies the controlling element in the play, at least in theory, by bringing them on as prologue as well as epilogue. Maybe it's their use as mobile scenery, which works beautifully some of the time and is just distracting at others. Maybe it's the "nothing up our sleeves" approach that this production, echoing the legendary Peter Brook one, takes to the supernatural. But that's no big deal, since this play, unlike The Tempest, doesn't call for magic tricks; three characters get eye drops and one gets a donkey's head, hardly effects requiring a Houdini level of prestidigitation. Rick Roberts' production is, in fact, uneven, though that's hardly a damning adjective to hurl at someone who, unless his bio is leaving stuff out, has never directed Shakespeare before and has only directed a couple of things by anyone else. Ken MacKenzie's spare set features a translucent screen behind which appear some lovely images, including a breathtaking one of Titania (the program spells her Tatania but I'll ignore that) stretched out asleep in her bower.
As usual, Oberon and Titania are doubled with the earthly rulers Theseus and Hippolyta, and this time it's the mortal half of the equation that proves more interesting. If there's a link, it's that in both kingdoms the woman challenges the man; in the palace she wins and in the wood she loses. Trish Lindstrom is not, mercifully, one of your sulky Hippolytas; in her first lines, she throws down an erotic gauntlet that Ins Choi's affable Theseus is slow to retrieve. She later strikes a blow for something or other by taking it upon herself to forgive the lovers, thereby overbearing the will not only of heavy-father Egeus, who would prefer honour killing, but of Theseus himself, to whom the speech textually belongs. Neither actor is as compelling in fairyland, with Choi's Oberon too monotonously the Demon King and Lindstrom almost obscured by the staging. Gregory Prest does very well as Puck, a Pan-like figure with a sympathy deficit, whose demands for attention include bemusing slides into a Russian accent. (I suspect an Academy in-joke.) But Titania's encounter with the translated Bottom can never have gone for less, mainly because this Bottom has nothing to be translated from.
After playing a magnificently down-at-heel professional actor in The Fantasticks, Oliver Dennis falls unexpectedly foul of the greatest of all amateurs. I didn't think it was possible for Dennis to be miscast, but Bottom's blithe self-assurance isn't in him. When he meets Peaseblossom, Cobweb and co. (played by tiny puppets, which is a cop-out), he seems intimidated by them, playing against the text and getting nothing in return. The clown scenes, though staffed by company vets, crumble around him. There are some nice bits, when we get to Pyramus and Thisbe: Michael Hanrahan's sorely tried Quince, miffed at being denied his epilogue, Michael Simpson's Thisbe, discovering his inner diva, and John Jarvis' indignant battered Wall. William Webster plays a wheel-chaired narcoleptic Lion, and he also delivers by orthodox standards -indeed by any standards -the evening's most authoritative verse-speaking in the monstrously thankless role of Egeus.
Though he may be challenged there by Jason Rothery, who as Philostrate seems to be channelling John Hodgman. The finale, with Puck in the ascendant, is beautifully done, and in sending us home happy it keeps the play's most important promise.