nostalgic, admirable, but not magical

June 26, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Williamstown Theatre Festival's production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a nostalgic tribute to the fifty year history of summer plays in the Adams Memorial Theatre. The large cast, supplemented by a bevy of interns, includes many of the theatrical stars who over the years have played there and returned in tribute to the outgoing producer, Michael Ritchie.

The settings of the play are a part of that tribute. The time is 2004 and the theatre itself and the surrounding town of Williamstown with the mountains and the tower on Mount Greylock looming. Choosing to set the play thus has much effect on style and tone in this production. The opening and closing scenes, set with replicas of the very theatre in which the audience sits, worked well. The "dream" scenes, in which all the characters end up in the wood, did not.

In the well-known plot, three groups weave in and out of the fairy-land that is the woods: young lovers who are runaways from the court, a group of "rude mechanicals" who want a spot to rehearse a play, and the fairies themselves. Unfortunately, the woods, replete with slides, levels, fences and gimmicks and mad-cap fairies, was not very successful.

The actors are all admirable and play their roles as this conception of the play seems to require, but the magic is missing. Kate Burton is a beautiful Titania and appealing when she defies Oberon for possession of the changeling child. But she doesn't inhabit the role as she did that of Hedda Gabler here a few years ago. Oberon (John Bedford Lord) is a commanding macho figure who speaks lines such as "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows" with grace.

But the runaway star of this star-studded cast is Jeremy Shamos as Bottom. From the moment he enters the play demanding, "Let me play the lion," he delights. He is agile and also naïve, extremely appealing in his early address to the audience. Granted the role is an obvious crowd-pleaser, in this production Shamos is a super-crowd-pleaser. He is abetted by his five cohorts, all well cast and more than willing to go the extra mile, especially in their Pyramus and Thisbe performance. Shakespeare’s super-farce always works but works especially well in this production where one of the funniest touches is the inability of Moon to climb onto a chair. Bottom’s appearance, even in the too-gimmicky woods, works, although the fairies do get in the way.

Director Nicholas Martin has chosen a strong cast and all performed admirably given the concepts of the production. However, the over-all pattern, while working smoothly at the beginning and end, was weakened by a "woods" that was neither a moon-lit floating dream world, nor a dread dream world where one’s worst fears bubbled up (as one has seen it played). Instead, this "woods" was a contemporary non-place, and the fairies were the wrong kind.

That said, one must again praise the actors, too many to list, but all dedicatedly flinging themselves into their roles.

And the opening of the play, with its replica of the very theatre in which the audience sits and its closing with an even smaller replica of that theatre for Bottom and his crew to cavort in, are by themselves worth a trip to Williamstown.

Because these settings work so well, the ending of the play is especially moving, (and the one time that the fairies are effective). Once all the mad-cap adventures are over, couples are wedded and bedded, Oberon and Titania appear to "bless the house" which in this performance has a special meaning. The entire fairy troupe (lights blinking everywhere) line the aisles. Then Puck, alone on the stage, asks the audience to bless "this hallowed house," the theatre where we sit and where so many wonderful actors and directors and designers have brought such talent and joy to the Berkshires.

With this ending, the production swings, without over sentimentality, back to its beginning concept, for me, lost along the way, but found again.

Audiences, who have during the past 50 years been grateful for the bounty the Williamstown Festival has brought us , will be glad to have shared this “blessing” of which they too are a part. The playbill lists all the admirable stars who returned to shine again in Williamstown, and as a special bonus meticulously lists pages of each decade of the plays performed there. Checking these lists you may be surprised at all the “blessings” of theatre that over the years the Williamstown Theatre Festival has brought you. It was enough for me to forgive a fairyland that failed me, and left me grateful for so much of the production that pleased.