One Puck Too Many
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
George Brown Theatre School
The National Post
"Good morrow, friends," says Duke Theseus in A Midsummer Night's Dream, when he comes upon the quartet of lovers sleeping in the wood near Athens: "Saint Valentine's is past." This line, surprisingly, failed to get a laugh on Wednesday night; maybe we were all too preoccupied with the filthy weather conditions through which we had struggled to get to Dufferin and Dundas to remember that it was still Feb. 14. We were also close enough to the end of the play to have begun worrying about the journey back. It seemed a dank, cheerless night on which to be seeing this of all plays.
It may, though, have been appropriate. According to Titania, the fairy queen, the weather in the Dream is awful, the seasons totally jumbled up, although she puts this down not to global warming but to the repercussions of her own domestic quarrel with her Oberon.
Certainly Chris Earle's production, this year's joint venture by the professionals of Equity Showcase and the students of George Brown Theatre School, offers nothing green for our comfort. It is set on a flat disc of varnished wood, linked to the auditorium by wide steps of the same material. At either side of the stage is a stepladder; at the back of it is a murky grey curtain that turns out, when lit, to conceal Titania's bower.
Presumably, the hope is that this neutral setting will provide a launching pad from which the play can soar, fuelled by its own verbal and imaginative energy. That is to place rather too much trust in the powers of a mostly inexperienced cast, who can make the verse comprehensible but not transporting. But if the staging doesn't help them much, it doesn't hinder either, and the show is for the most part lively and intelligent. The “Pyramus and Thisbe” interlude is expectedly funny; so, less expectedly, is the long lovers' quarrel. And at the close, when the fairies return by torchlight to bless Theseus' house and its newly married inhabitants, there are some moments of authentic magic.
As usual, the production's most obtrusively original idea is its worst. Puck in the play's text goes also by the name of Robin Goodfellow, and maybe it's this dual ID that has inspired the director to divide the role between two actors (actresses in this case) who are first seen kneeling and staring fixedly into one another's eyes, and then proceed to split the character's lines between them. That those who talk to them still seem to think that they're addressing a single gentleman is only a minor irritant; it's more damaging that we have lost one character without gaining two, since each partner now seems perversely to be acting less than half a role. It doesn't even help, as you might expect, in the scenes where Puck assumes multiple identities to mislead the mortals. And instead of talking to us, as Puck is required to do, they talk to one another, which is rude.
Of this right couple of Pucks, one (Melody A. Johnson) is a professional, and the other (Julie Tepperman) is a student. The licensed actors have in general been shrewdly distributed to bolster the learners. The most prominent card holder is Victor Ertmannis, who executes the now customary double of Oberon and Theseus. On this occasion, however, their respective spouses are played by separate actresses, so the merging of the two male rulers is as obscure in its purpose as the bisecting of Puck.
The professional Titania, Caroline Gillis, is very forthright and assured; the student Hippolyta, Janet Green, has few lines but demonstrates a talent for standing around looking thoughtfully beautiful, which is not a talent I would undervalue. Ertmannis himself plays a genially philistine Theseus, whose observations on the kindred qualities of the lunatic, the lover and the poet are as lucidly dismissive as Shakespeare must have meant them to be. His Oberon is much the same, but a touch more sinister. This actor seems unable to modify his native vocal quality, which is a ringing sneer; he even manages to make "all things shall be peace" sound like a threat. The pro among the lovers is Graeme Somerville, who makes the amorphous Demetrius not only a person in his own right -- a rather prim, self-satisfied one who awakens to some kind of maturity -- but the anchor of his scenes: a double first, I should think. This has an excellent effect on his companions: Lysander (Brett Christopher) is less defined, but pleasant; Helena (Amber Lewis) blossoms delightfully when she has two men at her feet and a defeated rival at her elbow; and the thwarted Hermia (Jennifer Firestone) is a very effective spitfire.
Egeus, Hermia's heavy father, is played by Oliver Dennis, who almost makes the character interesting: not a first, but a rarity. His main employment, though, is to play Peter Quince, presiding over the Athenian Workers' Dramatic Society with charming concern and a script always at the ready. He commands a very youthful troupe. Even Bottom, the Dream's star role, is played by a student, Aaron Willis, who captures the serene assurance that is the heart of the character but doesn't have the resources to explore it fully. He too, though, makes a fine job of his awakening from enchantment (that is, he enchants us) and the “Pyramus and Thisbe” nuptial cabaret is, as aforesaid, a scream.
Every production seems to yield some treasurable new gag; my favourite this time was Starveling's silent challenge to Lysander (or was it Demetrius?) to put up his dukes when the courtier's heckling became intolerable.
As far as overall interpretation goes: Like every production of the Dream, this one has discovered sex. Whether Bottom actually has it off with Titania is left, as the play leaves it, undetermined. The scenes in which the lost lovers in the wood earnestly discuss who shall sleep with whom and at what distance are delightfully done. Theseus and Hippolyta begin the play with some heavy double- entendre-ing about "the night of our solemnities" and Theseus' impatience for it; while the end rounds things off by having him, and others, knowingly underline every occurrence of the word "bed," which suggests somebody needs to grow up.
That, though, is not the play's last word: The immortals take over. And, what do you know, we emerged outside to find the skies clear and the road easy. Somehow, somewhere, a fairy couple must have shaken wings and made up.