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by William Shakespeare, directed by Chris Abraham

Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford

May 31-October 11, 2014

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments”

Stratford’s latest production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is the most intelligent and insightful production of the play the Festival has presented in decades.  Director Chris Abraham manages to give the play contemporary relevance while at the same time making us aware of the essential nature of theatre in general and comedy in particular.  Some may find Abraham’s concept for the play controversial, but in this case all I can say is, “Get used to it”.

Abraham has set the action in the present in a backyard in Stratford.  Two men (Josue Laboucane and Thomas Olajide) have just been married and all their friends have gathered to celebrate the occasion.  (Those from outside Canada should know that same-sex marriage has been legal in Ontario since June 10, 2003, and in all of Canada since July 20, 2005.)  Designer Julie Fox has decorated the aisles leading to the stage and Abraham has had the actors mingle with the audience to include the audience in the celebration. 

Scott Wentworth as the host of the reception suggests that the guests perform a play in honour the couple, after rejecting plays like Julius Caesar, they settle on A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the play begins.  As those familiar with the play will know, Dream contains a play-within-a-play called Pyramus and Thisbe, which a group of workmen called “mechanicals” rehearse to present for the nuptials of their King Theseus and his new bride Hippolyta.  Abraham’s frame thus causes the wedding guests’ production of Dream to be an amateur production in honour of a wedding which contains an amateur production in honour of a wedding within it.  This means that Abraham can draw humour not just from Shakespeare’s play itself but from the makeshift means the wedding guests use to enact it.  Most of these derive from anachronisms.  When Philostrate gives Theseus a list of plays to consider, he hands him an iPad.  When the mechanicals want to know if a moon will be shining the night they present the play, one gets out his iPhone to search for the info while Peter Quince reaches for an almanac and, to the great delight of the audience, beats the other to finding the answer.

In Shakespeare’s play, all the parts in Pyramus and Thisbe are played by men.  This, of course, was the norm in Shakespeare’s time where only men and boys were allows to perform in the theatre, a situation that began with the mystery plays of the Middle Ages and lasted until the Restoration in 1660.  In Pyramus and Thisbe, the female role of Thisbe is played by a man, Flute, because that is what would have been expected and thus the only gender choice available.  Abraham takes this concept and gives it a contemporary twist.  He has all the mechanicals played by men, except for Peter Quince who is played by a woman (Lally Cadeau). 

Abraham makes two other key changes in the traditional gender casting of the roles in Dream, that reflect the fact that in Shakespeare’s time the entire play would have been performed by a same-sex cast.  Both Oberon and Titania are performed by men – on opening night, Jonathan Goad as Oberon and Evan Buliung as Titania.  Lysander, one of the four lovers who flee into the enchanted forest outside Athens, is played by a woman, Tara Rosling. 

Abraham gives us the impression that the Titania, played in female costume, is a result of casting whoever among the guests is best for the role, and that person just happens to be male.  The female Lysander, however, is a deliberate choice meant to reflect the same-sex wedding that the guests are celebrating.  We note that while all nouns referring to Lysander (“boy”, “son” etc.) remain male,

Abraham has changed the pronouns from “he” to “she”.  Titania, however, though played by a man is always referred to as “she”.  Abraham further reinforces the theme of role-playing inherent in the theatre, by having the actors who play Oberon and Titania alternate in those roles throughout the run.      

The fact that Hermia’s father Egeus (Michael Spencer-Davis) rejects Lysander as a partner for his daughter Hermia (Bethany Jillard) now makes him homophobic and an opponent of same-sex marriage.  This gives Lysander and Hermia an even stronger incentive than in the original to flee Athens to find somewhere where their love can receive official sanction. 

Abraham has Egeus played by a guest who is deaf and whose use of American Sign Language has to be translated by another guest (Derek Moran).  At first, this choice seems mystifying, but on reflection it provides the key to understanding Abraham’s entire approach to Shakespeare’s play.  To have Egeus be deaf and reject his daughter’s sexuality is deeply ironic.  To be deaf, like being gay, is to be part of a non-visible minority.  Society used to shun deaf people but has since overcome its prejudice and learned how to integrate them into society and allow them the same rights as the hearing.  Society also used to shun gay people but, at least in Canada and select parts of the world, has since overcome its prejudice and learned how to integrate them into society and allow them the same rights as heterosexuals. 

The irony of Egeus’ rejection of Lysander and Hermia’s love reveals his own lack of perspective in how society has accommodated members of minorities like him, and like his daughter.  Abraham uses this particular notion of acceptance as progress in society to reflect the nature of comedy itself.  Tragedy depicts the exclusion from society of the central figure or figures through death or exile.  Comedy, on the other hand, depicts the integration of the central figure or figures into society usually through marriage.  That’s way so many comedies end in multiple marriages.  The society in Stratford that Abraham shows on stage has already accommodated a same-sex marriage.  In the course of the play the guests stage the society of Athens comes to accommodate another.  It is a brilliant concept.   

Of course, a concept would be nothing if it did not lead to a clear understanding of the play, but that is exactly what Abraham has taken great care to do.  Far too many productions of Dream, consist of the four lovers rushing about shouting their lines and having slapstick battles.  Here all four – Hermia, Lysander, Helena (Liisa Repo-Martell) and Demetrius (Mike Shara) – speak with exemplary clarity so that we fully understand the consternation that the interference of Puck (Chick Reid) has caused with Oberon’s love potion.  With a lesbian Lysander

proclaiming love for Helena along with Demetrius after both have been magicked by Puck, it is clearer than ever before why Helena should feel that her friends have conspired to make fun of her.  And for once we actually sympathize with her situation.  After Puck has put all right with the antidote to the potion, Shara lends such sincerity to Demetrius speech of apology to Helena that it becomes one of the most moving passages in the play.

The one scene where Abraham allows a gimmick to obscure clarity is during the quarrel among the four lovers in Act 3.  There Abraham uses iced cupcakes as a substitute for the custard pies of silent movies and allows each of the lovers to smash a creamy cupcake right in the face the others.  The problem is that as soon as we seen an actors armed with a cupcakes speaking loudly to each other, we are too distracted by anticipating what will happen to listen to what they are saying.  Here, too, Abraham allows the actors to shout so that many choice passages about Hermia’s being short or Helena’s appeal to her childhood friendship with Hermia go missing.

There are many memorable performances.  Stephen Ouimette is absolutely hilarious as Bottom.  You may have seen Dream twenty times before, but Ouimette makes the role seem completely fresh.  Evan Buliung, playing Titania in a what looks like a wedding gown, may be a man in a dress but completely avoids any notion of excess associated with drag.  He exudes even more grace, elegance and power than does Maev Beaty who plays Hippolyta.  Even though he is “Queen of the Fairies”, he and Abraham so control our view of Titania that the word “fairy” never gets a laugh.  We laugh at the enchanted Titania’s falling in love with the transformed Bottom, not at the character herself.

Jonathan Goad in a headdress of ram’s horns, makes an imposing Oberon and proves that he actually can speak verse as verse and do so with great effect.  He also has a good sense of humour and after he accidentally fell bum-first into an onstage pool of water, he joked, “I’m a flier not a swimmer” to the roaring crowd.

The four lovers are well matched and Abraham involves us in the story so well that we soon forget that Lysander is supposed to a woman.  Scott Wentworth displays a genial attitude both as the host in the frame and as Theseus, while Maev Beaty’s Hippolyta seems moody and never quite won over.  Lally Cadeau makes an enthusiastic Peter Quince and for once Quince’s prologue to his play is funny because we so clearly perceive he stops at the ends of lines rather than at the punctuation marks.  Chick Reid is an unusual Puck in never calling attention to herself. 

If there is a flaw with Abraham’s production it is that Dream, one of Shakespeare’s shortest play, runs for almost three hours.  The reason for this is the addition of so many musical selections.  One certainly would not want to do without the little children who play the fairies singing Bruno Mars’ 2010 hit song “Grenade”.  But having the adult fairies tap dance Titania to sleep doesn’t quite make sense, and by the time Ouimette sings a karaoke version of “Bizarre Love Triangle” by New Order for the bergamask after Pyramus and Thisbe, it feels like one set of comic antics too many.

In this production the words of Puck’s final speech, “If we shadows have offended ...” take on additional resonance.  Some audience members will be offended by the production’s acceptance of same-sex marriage and portrayal of gender roles not as inherent but incidental.  To them I would quote the first lines of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116, just as Abraham has Wentworth do to start the play: “Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments”.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Scott Wentworth, Thomas Olajide and Josue Laboucane; Tara Rosling as Lysander and Bethany Jillard as Hermia, ©2014 Michael Cooper; Stephen Ouimette as Bottom and Evan Buliung as Titania, ©2014 Erin Samuell.

For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.