A Midsummer Night's Dream
By William Shakespeare
Bruce R. Nelson* as Bottom
July 7-23, 2006
Outdoors in the Meadow at Evergreen House
Thursdays - Saturdays at 7pm
Sundays at 5pm
Baltimore Shakespeare Festival presents its 6th summer production in the meadow at the Evergreen House, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Audiences are encouraged to bring a chairs or a blanket and the meadow opens two hours prior to curtain for picnics!
Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's 2006/2007 Season presents a world of device, deception and desire. It begins with Shakespeare's most mischievous play, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Lovers' emotions are twisted and turned on the whims of a sardonic Puck as they spend a tormented evening lost in the woods. Meanwhile, the fairy kingdom is taking sides in a battle over a child who possesses a strange and new kind of magic and tradesmen earnestly rehearse a tragedy humorous enough to play at a marriage of heroes.
Director Laura Hackman utilizes a phenomenally talented cast, idyllic setting and aerial dance to create a truly spectacular and unique version of this well loved play. A graduate of Catholic University's acclaimed MFA program, Ms. Hackman has directed The Tempest, Hamlet, As You Like it and Much Ado about Nothing outdoors at the Evergreen House with the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival. Tim Marrone* takes on the roles of the manipulating Oberon and heroic Theseus. Newcomer to the region Mindy Woodhead* gives audiences a smoldering and iconic portrayal of Titania as well as Hippolyta the beautiful queen of the Amazons. Jen Plants* gives a most dry and witty interpretation of the famous Puck. Aerial artist C.J. Kish twists and turns his way back and forth between Oberon and Titania as the Changeling Child. Katherine E. Hill and Gia Mora take on the roles of the innocent and hopeful Hermia and obsessive and unashamed Helena. The tormented male lovers Demetrius and Lysander are played by Damon Kinard and Ben Cunis. The mechanicals are led by two time Helen Hayes Nominee Kathleen Akerley as Peter Quince. The hilarious Dana Whipkey*, of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead fame, plays Francis Flute who stars in the mechanical's production as the lovely Thisbe. The loveable buffoon Bottom is enacted by the two time Helen Hayes Award Winner Bruce R. Nelson*. The tradesmen are rounded out BSF favorite Ian Belknap and newcomers Momo Nakamura and Charity Phalo.
BSF's 2006 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is sponsored by
*Denotes Member, Actor's Equity Association
Review from The Baltimore Examiner
Tim Maronne* as Oberon
& Jen Plants* as Puck
A Dream without Fear of Flying
By Stephen Wigler
Special to The Examiner
"A Midsummer Night's Dream" is Shakespeare's most magical play. The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's current outdoor production at Evergreen House brings that magic to life.
The play's subject is love; its characters, both human and fairy, are driven by it. The action of the play demonstrates that love, no less than magic, works miraculous transformations -- love, in other words, is magic.
Director Laura Hackman's central metaphor is aerial. While mortals pursue each other on the ground, fairies conduct such pursuit in trapeze-like swings. This is no gimmick: the inebriation produced by being in love has always been likened to the experience of flying.
Hackman doesn't allow visual spectacle to distract from verbal significance. Early in Act II, Titania, the Fairy Queen, delivers one of the play's great speeches, indicting her quarrel with her consort, Oberon, for the disasters visited upon the environment. As Mindy Woodhead (Titania) spoke, she whirled angrily on her airborne swing -- her eloquence emphasized, rather than diminished, by her movement.
There was more to this "Dream" than its central metaphor. The several stories taking place on stage were shrewdly managed: the impending marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta; the shenanigans between Hermia, Lysander, Helen and Demetrius; the Athenian tradesmen intent on staging their unintentionally hilarious "tragedy"; and at the center of it all, Oberon and Titania. The cast, while not always faultless, was strong.
Bottom (Bruce Nelson) is one of Shakespeare's most celebrated characters. One expected a tour de force in his scene with Titania, but it was Woodhead who provided most of the laughs. Nelson was better when the tradesmen finally get to stage their play: 20 hysterical minutes of farce.
Equally amusing were the four young lovers: the girls first knocking the boys about, and then turning on each other. The moment when Helena (Gia Mora) tells Demetrius (Damon Kinard) "I am your spaniel" -- and then proceeds to bark and "sit" -- is great theater
Jen Plants's Puck was rather original -- as tender as witty, more caring than scorning, warm and luminous rather than scorching and fiery.
Mindy Woodhead* as Titania
& Bruce R. Nelson* as Bottom
Review From Baltimore Sun - Arts/Life
Pleasant 'Dream' has clever staging
Shakespeare play soars at Evergreen
By J. Wynn Rousuck
Sun Theater Critic
Originally published July 16, 2006
Cirque du Soleil meets Shakespeare in the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival's charming outdoor staging of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Shakespeare's romantic comedy looks at love on three levels - in the ranks of the royals, among young people and in the fairy kingdom. In director Laura Hackman's breezy production, some of those fairies fly from the trees.
The airborne feats, created by aerial choreographer Buffy Hornung, make use of two devices suspended from trees in the meadow at Evergreen House. The first is an expanse of stretchable white fabric, which eventually serves as the bed shared by Titania, the fairy queen, and the peculiar object of her desire - Bottom, the weaver who is under a spell that gives him the head of a braying ass.
The second device is a large ring whose cleverest use comes in the play-within-a-play - the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe, staged by the "mechanicals," or tradesmen. In the playlet, the workman playing Wall stands in the ring, and the chink through which Pyramus and Thisbe communicate is the space between his legs (adding a further dash of ribaldry).
The production's most accomplished aerialist is Mindy Woodhead, whose portrayal of Titania is light and airy in its own right. She brings a lithe dancer's grace to her airborne stunts, while retaining the majesty befitting the fairy queen.
The mechanicals, in contract, are appropriately oafish and bumbling. As Bottom, Bruce R. Nelson undergoes physical spasms when he finds himself literally turning into more and more of an ass. Nelson portrays the weaver as the type of blowhard who seems to deserve his comeuppance, which shocks him into a rare spate of humility - when he isn't braying, that is.
Hackman has cast the same pair of actors as the mortal queen and duke, and as their fairy counterparts (Woodhead and Tim Marrone, who is too earthbound in both roles). Though this double casting is not uncommon, Hackman does something else that's a little more unusual. Most of the actors who play the clumsy mechanicals also play the ethereal fairies, suggesting, perhaps, that even the most drab and commonplace among us have a fanciful side.
Two pairs of young lovers make up the third stratum in Shakespeare's tripartite comedy. Helena loves Demetrius, but he loves Hermia, who is, in turn, in love with Lysander.
Hermia's father, meanwhile, is determined that she marry Lysander.
Here Hackman has done an awkward bit of casting, turning Hermia's disgruntled father into a disgruntled mother (Kathleen Akerley). It's a change that doesn't make much sense in the patriarchal society inhabited by the play's mortals.
As the young swains, however, Damon Kinard, as Demetrius, and Ben Cunis, as Lysander, perform an amusing a fight scene (staged by fight director Lewis Shaw), in which each tries to restrain the other. Katherine E. Hill also does able work as Hermia. But the real standout is Gia Mora, who displays strong comic timing in her gawky portrayal of the much put-upon Helena.
A Midsummer Night's Dream is ideally suited to al fresco staging, and the Evergreen meadow is a natural asset. As its inaugural production in 1994, the Baltimore Shakespeare Festival produced this play in a similarly effective outdoor setting at the Cloisters.
What's new and different here is the aerial work. Peter Brook directed a legendary production using aerialists in 1970, but that was staged indoors. Moving the action outdoors adds a magical touch.
Though not all of the actor/aerialists are as graceful as Woodhead, seeing her Titania float among the trees in the moonlight is so lovely, it's apt to make even the most skeptical believe in fairies.