Bottom's up

Comedy tops poetry in Trinity's Dream

by Carolyn Clay

A Midsummer Night's Dream, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Alan MacVey. Set design by Christine Jones. Costumes by William Lane. Lighting by Michael Chybowski. Sound/composition by David Van Tieghem. With Stephen Berenson, Anne Scurria, Fred Sullivan Jr., Robert J. Colonna, Vanessa Hidary, Eric Tucker, Mauro Hantman, Jennifer Mudge Tucker, Brian McEleney, William Damkoehler, Dan Welch, Timothy Crowe, Phyllis Kay, and Janice Duclos. At Trinity Repertory Company, through October 19.

Trinity Repertory Company kicks off its 34th season with a Midsummer Night's Dream that's part Peter Pan, part coed bachelor party. Rambunctious and endearing, the staging is billed as a celebration of marriage; yet it does not make that institution seem stodgy, stifling, or even entirely adult. Not without a rose-petal-laden charm, this is a Midsummer peopled by overalled fairies ruled by a king and queen who are cartoon-action-figure forces of nature. The play's quartet of mortal trysters are straight out of a Katharine Hepburn screwball comedy. And Puck is a horned toddler on a swing. In short, the production -- which is directed by newcomer Alan MacVey -- is an exuberant roller-coaster ride through the Athenian wood. But there are more lunatics and lovers than poets in the cars.

As for the "rude mechanicals" (who double as the fairies), they're modern-day workmen who open the play less like cast than crew, ambling about the white-dropclothed stage with their lunchboxes and tools as love-related pop tunes emanate from an AM station. One is reminded of Peter Brook's famous white-box staging of Shakespeare's Dream, except that these guys (two of whom are women) seem more likely to give the box a second coat of paint than to move in. The occupants-to-be, it would appear, are Theseus, duke of Athens, and his war-won fiance Hippolyta; but Anne Scurria's coerced Amazonian bride hovers in the background, silent and troubled. Scurria does more with this first scene, in which Hippolyta speaks five lines, than anyone I've seen, her character's incredulity at the patriarchal Athenian law -- which requires young Hermia to bow to her father's choice of a spouse for her -- palpable and smoking.

That skirmish, of course, gets things off and running. Hermia will flee to the Athenian wood with her intended, Lysander, to escape an enforced marriage to Demetrius, who will pursue the pair, his jilted ex-love Helena clinging to him like "a spaniel." Theseus and Hippolyta, clearly estranged, curl away from each other in frosty sleep. And the dropcloths are pulled away to reveal a grassy platform set against a billowing cellophane wall and what looks like a giant toadstool lit from within: Titania's bower, which sinks into the stage when required. Rose petals rain from the sky, and Puck, in the person of Stephen Berenson, a slightly maniacal but sweet Buster Brown of a spirit, descends on his swing.

Oberon and Titania, king and queen of the fairies, from whose feuding all natural discord comes, are presented by Fred Sullivan Jr. and Scurria as primal, often gleeful rag-bag gladiators in body-hugging protective gear. This He-Man and She-Ra approach is entertaining and well carried off, but Titania, in particular, has some of the most ravishing speeches in the play, the poetry of which gets lost in all the screaming and body-banging. The lovers played by Trinity Rep Conservatory students Vanessa Hidary, Eric Tucker, Mauro Hantman, and Jennifer Mudge Tucker, on the other hand, tend to emphasize the doggerel-like aspect of their verse, punching the rhymes. All are talented, though, and they bring a freshness and comic vigor to the quartet's sighing and scuffling.

Some of the excellent Trinity Rep ensemble's most reliable veterans take their places among the mechanicals/fairies, led by Brian McEleney's almost ethereally eager Peter Quince (his fairy is a sort of utilitarian hummingbird on stilts). As ham-turned-ass Bottom the weaver, a bushy-bearded William Damkoehler turns in a dapper proletarian with a touch of Groucho that, when Puck turns Bottom into Titania's donkey love toy, merges brayingly with Mr. Ed. It's an expert performance, more jauntily foolish than flamboyant (and positively Freudian in its use of an unlighted cigar).

Abetted by Dan Welch as a ditzy Flute, Timothy Crowe as an aw-shucks Starveling, Phyllis Kay as an anxious Snout, and Janice Duclos as a stuttering Snug, these guys are about as lovable as the Seven Dwarves. And their rendition of the unkillable "cruel death of Pyramus and Thisby" so clearly aims to please, it's not just hilarious but touching -- and distinguished by one desperately inspired moment in which a late entrance by Snug's befuddled king of the jungle is covered by a game if white-knuckled rendition of "The Lion Sleeps Tonight."

Although infinitely more professional, this typically energetic Trinity staging is not unlike the mechanicals' roughhewn thespian offering to Theseus and his bride. It too is a wedding gift of sorts: each performance honors a married couple who are given pride of place in the audience, a quick shower of rose petals, and a trumpet serenade of "Blue Moon." And if the production stints on Shakespeare's melodiousness, it is -- like the play within it -- innocent, idiosyncratic, and pretty irresistible.