Danny Scheie as donkey-konked Bottom flirts with fairy queen Titania (Pegge Johnson) in Aaron Posner’s production of Shakespeare’s A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, opening this weekend at Two River Theater in Red Bank. (Photos by Kevin Berne)
By TOM CHESEK (First published October 18, 2009)
The drama club of Brookdale Community College did it out on the lawn at Riverside Gardens. The good community players of Spring Lake did it in the park; a group of neighbors did it in an old farmhouse in Holmdel, and we have it on good authority that high school students have been doing this in auditoriums and all-purpose rooms since they invented school.
Sure, you’ve had plenty of chances to see A Midsummer Night’s Dream in recent years, but if it’s the only Shakespeare you’ve ever attempted to sit through — if you’ve always kind of thought of it as Bard for Beginners — be advised that Aaron Posner, the Artistic Director of Two River Theater Company and the man who teamed with Teller to bring a sensationally bloody magical Macbeth to Red Bank a couple of seasons back, is at large in the forest. What promises to be a fresh new look at A Midsummer Night’s Dream starts in previews tomorrow and opens this weekend, with its mischievous wood spirits, eloping lovers and ass-headed actors at play beneath a mid-autumn moon.
No, summer’s been and gone, as our current cold snap makes plain, and if it’s not exactly a sin (on a par with wearing white after Labor Day) to perform Dream in the off-season, then you’ve at least got to have a killer production in store if you’re not planning on frolicking around outdoors.
In fact, the great outdoors — the hills of Orinda, California to be precise — was where Posner’s new staging of the circa-1595 play took root. A co-production of TRTC and California Shakespeare Theater (just as the company’s previous 26 Miles was a collaboration with a troupe in Bethesda, Maryland), MND wrapped an acclaimed run at the open-air Bruns Amphitheatre a little over a week ago — whereupon the majority of the cast headed across the continent to set up shop (and temporary residency) in Red Bank. Posner, naturally, was already there on the scene.
Rest assured that the three intersecting plotlines of the Bard’s surreal comic fantasy of fairy royalty, the idle rich and working-class actors are still intact, albeit trimmed a little here and tweaked a little there. You’ve got young Hermia, eloping with her lover Lysander rather than being forced by her father into marriage with Demetrius. You’ve got the bickering, pranking fairy king Oberon and his queen Titania, with the barely contained Puck a constant wild card. You’ve got a regal wedding between Duke Theseus and Queen Hipployta, a festive event that summons a troupe of actors, in the persons of five working class “mechanicals” from the village.
The tradesmen put on a rather surprising play-within-a-play, the young lovers get their stars crossed, characters are attracted to the most innocuous partners, and yes, the earnestly hammy actor Bottom gets himself turned into a freak with the head of a donkey.
What’s new and different in this staging is the use of music — as incidental score, as song and as accompaniment to dance. And what’s reassuring here are the familiar faces from past TRTC shows — from company leading lady Erin Weaver (Our Town;Mary’s Wedding; A Murder, A Mystery and a Marriage) to two veterans of last year’s Frog and Toad. There’s Doug Hara, also from Posner’s brilliant take on Our Town, and there’s even the Shakespearean debut of Joseph Harrell, the former Marine drill instructor who was so memorable in last year’s ReEntry.
Red Bank oRBit caught up with Aaron Posner at his office, as the forest took shape on the first floor. Read on.
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