The first play we saw at the Festival was “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”. We saw it on July 4, but I suppose Ashland has strict noise ordinances, because very few festive firework fizzles frazzled us.

I think in some ways this play is one of Shakespeare’s most forgiving. The lovers, always in a fret; devilish Puck; the bumbling Players; they all play themselves. (Especially the players—how hard is it to act badly?) I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bad production of the play. That said, the one we attended at OSF was quite good.

Oddly, the faeries, who usually steal the show, were not the most compelling - the lovers were. As you may know, the script abounds with comparisons between Helena’s and Hermia’s heights. Usually, this is a matter of 2 inches or so, perhaps helped along with footwear. On the OSF stage we saw Helena, the 5’10” willowy blonde, and Hermia, the little Asian lady. I would be surprised if Hermia was 5’2”. The girls were the best I’d ever seen, and the boys were good, too. One couldn’t help but feel that the 6’6” Demetrius really ought to be courting Helena. You might know that when Helena and Hermia begin to squabble, in the play, Helena entreats the men to protect her from Hermia - “And though she be but little, she is fierce”. Usually, this is the first scene where Hermia’s pugnacity comes into play. In this production, she beat Demetrius up for information on Lysander’s whereabouts in a beautiful comic fight scene that had me gasping and weeping with laughter. Ever seen a Siamese cat run off a REALLY BIG DOG? Yeah, that’s right.

They chose to double Titania and Oberon with Hippolyta and Theseus, which is certainly a well-established and valid option. However, in this case I felt it encouraged them to play T&H fairly woodenly - for contrast with their fae selves. Also, it was the centerpiece of a monster piece of parallelism which I don’t think they quite pulled off. Titania’s bower was inside a giant locket with T&H inside and T&O on the outside. A necklace which apparently symbolized the Indian boy went back and forth betwixt T&O, and a very similar sort of necklace, some sort of engagement gift, went back and forth between T&H - perhaps clever, if the back and forth had made more sense. Philostrate in the court was Puck in the forest, which led to the subtlest and most successful parallel-twinge moment—Philostrate talks about seeing the Rude Mechanicals rehearse (which of course Puck did see), and then kind of starts and shakes his head, wondering when he saw them rehearse. They tried to do something similar with Titania/Hippolyta and Bottom, but I thought it was overdone. Frankly, I do not thank Kevin Kline for expanding the importance of Bottom. A big Bottom is unseemly, if you get my drift.

The best innovation, I thought, was Puck. He was played by an excellent older character actor, Sandy McCallum, and seemed quite creaky. He had four fairy minions, a boy, a teenager, a young man, and a woman, all dressed exactly like him. Thus when it came time to confuse the combatant lovers, there were five of them to call and confuse; five to affright the players and seize Bottom; five to disperse in all directions to get (mostly the wrong) love inducing flowers. It was quite droll to hear him say, “See how I go! Faster than the arrow from the Tartan’s bow!” and recline, holding his back, in a seat, shooing his Pucklings off into the world.

At any rate, that is my report on the play—I don’t wish to go on too much, and I find it more interesting to hit the highs and lows than give a cohesive summary like a book report. I’m not in school, I don’t have to. Neener! The production did inspire me to some musings on how I would do some things differently, so a post on that will be forthcoming.