Midsummer Night’s Dream (no, not the horror movie!) is still being presented at the Ashland Oregon’s Shakespeare Center’s brilliant Bowmer theater. The stage juts into the audience, inviting all to attend the Court of King Theseus in Athens and his upcoming marriage to Hippolyta, late the queen of the Amazons.
It’s wonderful to see a show basically about no more than a three-way prenuptial squabble. The men/women who are about to embark on the serious business of marriage, are thrown into comedically ruptured romances on a warm firefly-lit arboreal night. And the audience members get to giggle away, albeit uneasily, checking their spouses or partners to see if they think the hijinks, intraspousal putdowns, and infidelity are taken as funny.
You know the tale: three planned marriages in ancient Athens are about to go on the rocks. All because some old grouser named Egeus, who has juice with King Theseus, demands that his daughter Hermia marry Lysander, someone she loathes. She wants Demetrius who’s loved by Hermia’s best friend Helena. Not a new story.
When the King goes along with Egeus’s authority over his daughter, directing her to “either marry or be executed,” rebellion breaks out and the young unmatched and unmarried quartet run off to the forest some fleeing, some chasing. Meanwhile Theseus’ betrothed Hippolyta becomes enraged that her husband-to-be has revealed his true colors by backing Egeus and she is ready to cancel her wedding too.
Meanwhile, two powerful forest dwelling fairies are having a spat. Titania and Oberon, The king and Queen of the fairies, are randy spirits who have in the past infected and inflicted both Theseus and Hippolyta (neither of whom could earn awards for fidelity). Oberon and Titania use a tug of war over a lost child as a surrogate for a fight over who’s in charge in the fairy realm, each pranking the other in the course of a summer night. Their skirmish crosses into the territory of the four bolting Athenian lovers with predictably unpredictable outcomes. Who ends up with who doesn’t matter; clowning and confusion reigns supreme!
Puck, a fairy who bridges both worlds (“what fools these mortals be”), takes his orders from Oberon to plague Titania and along the way aright the four “star crossed lovers” (Oops! That’s Romeo and Juliet. Sorry).
Puck is brilliantly played by Seattle musical performer and playwright, Justin Huertas, who sparkles whether dancing or plucking his screaming electric guitar and performing the high powered songs that he wrote for the production.
The earthly lovers seem equipped with emotional fuel tanks longing for ignition. Puck holds the spark; touch him and you fly, you dance, you spin, wanting only to want, But what? A lover? Stardom? A glimpse of ecstasy, excitement, or rebirth? Whatever; you name it, Puck can set them all off like a roman candle along with us. And boy, does he ever, botching the romantic matchups in the process!
When the misalliances are rearranged, King and Queen in both realms get straight. Only Egeus gets punished for his unfeeling and is excluded from every bit of the reuniting revelry. Let’s face it; his ship is sinking. As in Neil Young’s words, he “never gets to fall in love, never gets to be cool.” Too bad. Egeus deserves no better!
By the time that the audience departs the theatre, they have fallen in love with love. Its ok that Puck mucks up romantic selection, and, for that matter, mocks fidelity. Who cares? In the words of Stephen Stills: “If you can’t be with the one you love love, the one you’re with”, even if the lover turns out to be a donkey who is bedding with you know who in her royal fairyland bower.
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