A Midsummer Night's Dream (review)

William Brown directed a lovely A Midsummer Night's Dream atop a hill reached by a winding trail deep in the southern Wisconsin woods. On this particular late summer night, the American Players Theatre (APT) company performed in a persistent drizzle, the stage slick and slippery, their costumes soaking through and clinging to them. The overall experience delighted, a warm but not unpleasant evening in the woods, constant but never heavy rain, a colorful and warm-hearted play presented before a looming natural backdrop of swaying and eerily lit trees. The drenched crowd enthusiastically supported the show, though at intermission we queued in long lines at APT's concession stands for coffee and cocoa, as well as at the gift shops for $5 hooded plastic ponchos.

Brown modernized A Midsummer Night's Dream to late-twentieth-century Athens. Bottom and the hempen homespuns-a construction crew clad in tool-belts, shorts, t-shirts and bandanas-worked amid drop cloths, paint buckets, tool chests, and even a blaring boom-box and blue port-a-potty upstage center, preparing for the royal wedding ceremony. Bottom's crew, with the Philostrate their foreman, created such a din with hammers and saws that the APT public address announcer abbreviated his pre-show prohibitions against cell phones and cellophane-wrapped candy with a droll, "Oh, forget it." These opening moments established a playful tone that was maintained throughout the entire performance.

The typically doubled roles of Theseus and Hippolyta with Oberon and Titania were at APT performed by an actual husband-and-wife team, enhancing the inherent battle-of-the-sexes chemistry. The fairy king, muscle-bound and bare-chested, roared at his defiant wife, who was slinky and sexy with long raven-black hair. In the bookending human scenes, the couple was played as well-seasoned politicians-Theseus a heavily-padded, gray-wigged and bespectacled autocrat with an amiable drawl and more than a passing resemblance to Bill Clinton, and Hippolyta a sharp-tongued, pants-suited, short-blonde-haired Hillary-like fiancé. They amiably disagreed during the opening sequence as Theseus was comically fitted by a dexterous tailor with a measuring tape.

The four lovers began the production by creating a commotion like an episode from the Jerry Springer show which drove Bottom to comically seek shelter in the upstage port-a-potty. The characters were colorfully drawn, with Hermia a voluptuous and spoiled debutante, Lysander her permed and swaggering surfer-dude boyfriend, Demetrius a sweater-vested nerd with inhaler and bug spray, and Helena toting a guitar case like a hippie from the 1960s. Brown infused the show with lively flourishes: the spoiled princess Hermia fanning herself with her own hands in her pubescent turmoil; the leisure-suited Lysander growling carnally and later wiping a bug from the bottom of his shoe in the forest; Demetrius, in shorts, backpack and spectacles, laying out a blanket with a wicker food basket and a bottle of wine for a seductive picnic; and Helena scurrying upon Demetrius's heels like a star-struck rock-and-roll groupie.

The attractive young players amused, but Puck-tall, athletic, and clad in black-leather like a rock star-established himself as the crowd favorite (especially with the teen-aged school-children bussed in for the performance) through an impressive array of twirling dance-moves, leaping splits, and sprinting slides across the rain-slickened stage. The forest scenes began with thumping tribal drumbeats and were played within eerie neon shades of light. Large bowls of water reflected the lighting, and Puck suspended a bowl at center stage from an overhanging arm, then howled at the moon as violet light played off the shimmering water. Brown depicted both Puck...