A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and: Coriolanus, and: As You Like It (review)
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Presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at Intiman Playhouse, Seattle, Washington. October 21–November 13, 2011. Directed by Sheila Daniels. Set by Andrea Bush. Costumes by Jennifer Zeyl. Lighting by Ben Zamora. Sound by Robertson Witmer. Properties by Marleigh Driscoll. Choreography by Peter Dylan O’Connor. Text Director Amy Thone. With Reginald Andre Jackson (Oberon), Amy Thone (Titania), Qadriyyah Shabazz (Hippolyta, Peaseblossom), Mike Dooly (Theseus, Mustardseed), Allison Strickland (Hermia), Terri Weagant (Helena), Trick Danneker (Demetrius), Christine Marie Brown (Lysandra), Todd Jefferson Moore (Nick Bottom), Chris Ensweiler (Puck, Philostrate), Kevin McKeon (Peter Quince), Gordon Carpenter (Egeus, Snout), Riley Neldam (Francis Flute, Moth), Zoey Cane Belyea (Snug), and Kacey Shiflet (Cobweb).
Presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at Center House Theatre, Seattle, Washington. January 4–29, 2012. Directed by David Quicksall. Set by Carol Wolfe Clay. Costumes by Pete Rush. Lighting by Kent Cubbage. Sound by Nathan Wade. Properties by Marleigh Driscoll. Choreography by Gordon Carpenter. With David Drummond (Caius Martius Coriolanus), Peter A. Jacobs (Menenius Agrippa), Mike Dooly (Tullus Aufidius), Therese Diekhans (Volumnia), Lance McQueen (Cominius), Tom Dewey (Titus Lartius), David S. Klein (Sicinius Velutus), Gerald B. Browning (Junius Brutus), Shanelle Leonard (Virgilia), Heather M. Persinger (Valeria), Joseph P. McCarthy (First Citizen), Jake Ynzunza (Second Citizen), and Jack Taylor (Young Martius).
Presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at Center House Theatre, Seattle, Washington. May 30–June 24, 2012. Directed by George Mount. Set by Craig B. Wollam. Costumes by Doris Black. Lighting by Roberta Russell. Sound by Robertson Witmer and Evan Mosher. Original music by Sarah McGuinn. Properties by Marleigh Driscoll. Choreography by Peter Dylan O’Connor and Gordon Carpenter. Music direction by Jon Lutyens. With Nathan Graham Smith (Orlando), Hana Lass (Rosalind), Keith Dahlgren [End Page 365] (Duke Senior), Ray Gonzalez (Duke Frederick), Peter Dylan O’Connor (Oliver), Rebecca Olson (Celia), David Pichette (Jacques), Darragh Kennan (Touchstone), Jon Lutyens (LeBeau, Amiens), David Brown-King (Dennis, Silvius), David S. Klein (Adam, Oliver Martext), Bill Johns (Corin), Hannah Mootz (Phebe), and Donna Wood (Audrey).
The demise of Intiman Theatre at Seattle Center in early 2011, while depriving Seattle of what had been a superb, Tony Award winning company, ironically may prove to be a boon for the future of Seattle Shakespeare Company. Since its inception in 1991 SSC has performed heroically in the gloomy basement of the Seattle Center House, a venue about which I have often complained in these pages. However, as SSC begins its twenty-first season Managing Director John Bradshaw has arranged with Seattle Center to produce two of SSC’s four plays at Intiman, and the company’s production of Midsummer Night’s Dream demonstrates that SSC has the chops to maximize the production opportunities afforded by Intiman’s generous stage.
Andrea Bush’s initial set belied the theatrical excitement to come. Stage left loomed a huge tree—Eden’s apple tree perhaps?—that cast a long shadow over the stage across which was a blazing red carpet that dissected the brown and green turf. Amid a soothing blue light that suffused the stage, and accompanied by ringing bells, Qadriyyah Shabazz, an African-American actress scantily dressed in brown and black leather tunic and sporting voluminous beads and multi-colored scarves suggesting an ancient Greek’s image of an Amazon, ran to center stage and sang in Greek of her conquest by Theseus. Daniels thus set her production squarely in antiquity, emphasizing the long history of love’s confusing desires. Theseus entered in gold breast plate, kilt, and knee guards, bearing a sword: Theseus as Achilles, the violent soldier-as-lover who “won” Hippolyta doing her injury. As Theseus spoke of his martial conquest, Hippolyta appeared stiff and unyielding, as if chafing under Theseus’s rule, and when Theseus ordered Hermia to obey her father Hippolyta bolted upstage right, furious at his vicious denial of a woman’s choice.
Daniels’s casting of Christine Marie Brown as “Lysandra” created an intriguing set of young lovers. All four wore identical, androgynous light blue, belted tunics. Brown was obviously a woman—not a woman playing a...
