Poetic performance

Of all the masterpieces in the Shakespeare canon, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is perhaps the most confectionary. But its fairytale sweetness and humor support a multitiered exploration of love’s power to blend the irrational and imaginary with the pragmatic and philosophical. It’s a mixture that is as delightful as it is challenging, and the current production by the Chico State Department of Music and Theatre, adapted and directed by Cynthia Lammel, accents all of its many virtues.

With a cast of 27 working in several subdivisions attending to several interlinked plots—each of which examines some aspect of love as related to, or through, romantic or political or philosophical or theatrical expressions—the play presents a kaleidoscopic but cohesive vision of love’s challenges and rewards. And Lammel’s young cast brings each character to sharply focused life.

The framing element of the plot is the upcoming and politically advantageous marriage of the Grecian duke, Theseus (Thomas Hart), to Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons (Zaria Turner). Theseus must pass judgment on the arranged marriage of Hermia (Nicole Stanley) and Demetrius (Josh Peterson), which Hermia rebels against because of her love for Lysander (Leif Keeley Bramer), who is in turn beloved by Helena (Alexandra Hilsee). The two young couples eventually make their separate ways into the nearby woods, which are also inhabited by Oberon, the fairy king (Malik Wilson), and his queen, Titania (Robin Tucker), and their respective entourages of sprites and fairies, including the mischievous and charismatic Robin Goodfellow, aka Puck (Ben Schiff). Also roaming the woods is a group of “rude mechanicals,” simple tradesmen bent on rehearsing the play they want to present to Theseus and his bride as a tribute at their wedding.

To summarize how all of these characters and their desires interact would be like unraveling a finely knit sweater into a tangled mass of yarn, but watching and listening to this cast weave Shakespeare’s many-threaded yarn into a cohesive whole provided an utterly satisfying evening of theater. Simply put, there were no weak performances. Shakespearean language is composed with such nuanced cadences, and, to contemporary ears, often convoluted constructions, that listening to and making sense of his sentences can sometimes feel like hearing a beautiful but somehow foreign version of our own language. This cast delivered that language with such clarity and conviction that, once one became absorbed, the rhythms and semantic idiosyncrasies of the sentences and their meanings revealed themselves like notes in a song.

And one cannot emphasize too emphatically the strength of this cast. The royals presented themselves with a truly regal aura, the pixies filled the stage with innocent sensuality, the young lovers in their passion and confusion brought to life the observation that, “The course of true love never did run smooth.” And the amateur players of the play within the play hilariously and poignantly embodied the spirit of community theater, especially in the person of Bottom, the weaver (Nick McCollum), whose enthusiasm could not be fazed even by being transformed for a night into the donkey-headed object of the fairy queen’s enchanted love.

Enhancing the strength of the acting were the costumes by Mallory Prucha, which gave each cast member an individuality of look that also harmonized with each character’s position within the interwoven groups. Then there was the beauty of the somewhat minimalist set design by Brian Redfern, which placed a set of Grecian columns on either end of the theater and left the beautifully painted floor open to provide a setting for every scene.

All in all, this production provided a wonderfully cohesive and joyously lively presentation of Shakespeare’s dream.