By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
Summer’s here.
School’s out.
Couples are marrying.
It’s a season for celebration. Beautiful Kids Independent Shakespeare adds to the festivities with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” marking its 20th season.
Puck (Dee BonAnno) and Oberon (Michael Portteus) conspire.
Director Abbey Casino noted in her introduction that the company is just a bit younger than she is.
Like irises, Beautiful Kids blossoms in June to present a Shakespeare play for all to enjoy, free of charge, in the open air – if the weather cooperates.
The play will be staged tonight (Wednesday), Thursday and Friday at 7 p.m. on the Needle Hall stage in Bowling Green’s City Park. (Moved inside in case the weather doesn’t cooperate.)
The comedy is the perfect selection for the anniversary show. Weddings play a central part with all the suitable complications, and the play is, in its way, a tribute to theater. Those rude mechanicals, played with gusto by Jalesa Earby, Pat Mahood, Nathaniel Smith and Zachary Taylor Robb as Bottom, are the forbearers of community theater, though not certainly at its finest.
Hermia (Nicole Tuttle) convinces Lysander (Joshua Powell) that he should not sleep next to her.
And the mischievous sprite Puck (Dee BonAnno) manipulates humans – “What fools these mortals be,” she exclaims – and enjoys the drama as it unfolds, even bringing some popcorn to munch as lovers quarrel.
All this makes for a lively, and very funny, production. Trimmed down to run two hours including intermission, the play has comic punch and narrative directness.
Using an 11-member cast, Casino makes good use of double casting. Rachel Hetrick plays both the mortal queen Hippolyta and the queen of the fairies, Titania while Michael Portteus plays both Theseus, the king of Athens, and Oberon, the king of the other world. It’s a duality that works well.
The otherworldly roles are the bigger and broader. Hetrick’s Titania is every bit able to stand up to Portteus’ blustering Oberon. So much so that he must rely on Puck to turn the trick that turns the plot.
Bottom (Zachary Taylor Robb) seated with Titania (Rachel Hetrick) is waited on by fairies played by Nathaniel Smith (left) and Pat Mahood.
BonAnno energizes every scene she’s in. Her Puck is full of cunning and mischievous energy. Yes, she’s cowed by Oberon’s fury, but it doesn’t deter her from enjoying herself thoroughly. Despite Oberon’s anger, she doesn’t at all regret that she mixes up lovers, an error that has the wrong boy pining for the wrong girl.
That quartet of lovers provides the human side of the comic equation. Hermia (Nicole Tuttle) loves Lysander (Joshua Powell), but her father has betrothed her to another young man, Demetrius (Jeffrey Guion). Demetrius had been engaged to Helena (Traci Johnson) but, smitten by Hermia, now spurns her.
Faced with marriage to a man she doesn’t love, execution, or life in a convent, Hermia agrees to flee with Lysander beyond the clutches of Athenian law. They escape into the woods, the realm of the fairies.
The quartet of actors does well to play out the attraction and antipathies of their characters. Johnson demonstrates exceptional comic timing as Helena. She appears to lament her fate carrying a bag of marshmallows. Hard enough to spit out Shakespearean verse and make it sound natural, harder still with a mouthful of a spongey confection. She does so sweetly. The marshmallows are her solace throughout. At odd moments she’ll pluck one from her bodice. Among these swooning, earnest lovers, she takes center stage, constantly and humorously befuddled.
She believes the men and Hermia are playing her for the fool. With Puck looking on, we have, in a way, another play within a play.
Peter Quince (Jalesa Earby) tries to talk sense into Bottom (Zachary Taylor Robb) as Francis Flute (Pat Mahood) looks on.
Helena’s confusion is caused by the spells cast on the men by Puck, but for Bottom, the weaver, being befuddled is his natural state. As he and his counterparts set about producing a play for the marriage of Theseus and Hippolyta, he’s full of suggestions including having himself play both the male and female leads, and why not the wall while he’s at it.
As the most foolish of the mortals, he’s a ripe target for Puck’s antics. She gives him a donkey’s head and then sees to it that he is what the bewitched Titania sees when she wakes, doomed to fall in love with whomever she spies first.
Bottom just takes it all as his due never questioning the adoration from the queen and her court (played by Mahood, Earby and Smith).
After all this magic is played out, and all the lovers’ quarrels resolved, the tradesmen get to stage their show, which is accompanied by rude commentary by the wedding party.
The fairies get the last word. Oberon offers his protection to all the slumbering lovers and the offspring that come from their couplings. And Puck sends the audience off into the night with the hope that they have enjoyed this vision. Beautiful Kids has been conjuring such theatrical magic for 20 years. That’s worth celebrating, and supporting.
