Also this issue:

Not Your Average Joe
Gallery Joe has exhibits by two impressive sculptors on display.
-Susan Hagen

5'5" & and Under
-Deni Kasrel

Mixed Media
-A.D. Amorosi

Razing the Bard
-Toby Zinman

Pop Garde
-Deni Kasrel

May 16-22, 2002

theater

Dream Away

by Toby Zinman

A Midsummer Night's DreamThrough June 16, Philadelphia Shakespeare Festival, 2111 Sansom St., 215-496-8001

“So quick bright things come to confusion.” A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a lovely bright thing, and it has come unhappily to confusion in this production directed by Dennis Lee Delaney. Unlike the straight-up Shakespeare Philly Shakes is noted for, this production has lots of spin, pointlessly and inconsistently updated to the Roaring ’20s, which seems nothing more than an excuse for tangos and Charlestons.

The play's plot is all about marriage; King Theseus is soon to wed Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons, after defeating her in battle. Despite this fraught situation, there is no tension -- sexual or otherwise -- between them, erasing one of the delicious complexities of the play's idea of marriage: the necessity of yielding. Tim Moyer's Theseus has about as much commanding masculinity as your local CPA and it is hard to believe the lovely, sleek amazon (Susan Wilder), whose eyes he never meets, has been conquered--in all kinds of ways--by him. This lack of chemistry is made awkwardly worse when the actors are transformed into Oberon and Titania, the King and Queen of the Fairies, who are having a terrific spat, famously involving a local yokel transformed into a donkey and a magic flower that makes Titania fall in love with him.

This same magic sorts out the two young couples who are wandering around in the woods on this midsummer night. Their four-way fight in Act 2 is hilarious (Stephanie Santer Shade as Helena is particularly good, as is Joseph Pisapia as Demetrius).

But the real fun of the evening is the play within the play. A group of laborers hilariously perform their play about the unlucky lovers Pyramus and Thisby for the King's wedding revels -- and it is no accident that the coarsest elements of the play are the most successful elements of this production. David Ingram as Bottom/Pyramus and Neill Hartley as Peter Quince give outstanding performances, and David Raphaely as Flute/Thisby is splendid -- adorable and surprisingly moving.

But the light, imaginative, sparkling elements of Midsummer are all pretty much a bust: The Fairies are leaden and the forest is bare. Mischievous Puck, the play's brightest thing, the quicksilver minion of the Fairy King, becomes (as played by Mollie Hall), irritatingly slow-talking and self-aggrandizing. The costumes by Jeff Fender are gorgeous, although satin is an unforgiving fabric.