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Stage Review: Passion's demure, not deep, in Public Theater's 'Dream'
Saturday, October 24, 1998 By Christopher Rawson, Post-Gazette Drama Critic
Beethoven on a tin whistle may be fine, especially if you like the aching sweetness of a tin whistle, but it can hardly capture the expected passion. That's what director Edward Gilbert does in staging Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with talented teen-agers in the thematically key roles of Oberon and Titania - an intriguing idea that doesn't work.
"A Midsummer Night's Dream"
WHEN: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays (7 p.m. some Tuesdays), 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays, other matinees, through Nov. 15.
TICKETS: $10-$36, students $10; 412-321-9800.
To a frisson of expectation, the mixed result opened last night, the first of the Public Theater's 1998-99 season of (mainly) titles reprised from its previous 23 years.
The Bard's popular comedy of confused lovers, warring fairies and bumbling amateur actors was written about 1595, set in ancient Greece and first staged by the Public 16 years ago. But in revisiting this classic, Gilbert invokes the memory of another era - the Victorian, when Shakespeare's passionate stagecraft was demurely prettified into pageantry and glitter.
Or maybe this "Midsummer" is better called Edwardian, in double reference to the era, occasionally evoked in the costuming, and to the director, who contributes some original lyrics to complete Shakespeare's work.
The result is very pretty, sometimes even sumptuous. And much of the comedy is happily intact, thanks to energetic lovers and to master clown Heath Lamberts, who, albeit fettered, scores a personal triumph as Bottom, the vainglorious bumbler. But at the center of the play, where we expect to find a primal contest between male and female with the balance of humanity and nature at issue, we have pretty wallpaper, cool, delicate, without conflict.
Some of this is a matter of interpretation: Gilbert might argue that "Midsummer" is less Beethoven than Mozart. OK, but Mozart has a passionate center. Or, just on an aural level, imagine "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik" without woodwinds. For all their personal appeal and visual delight, Young Jared Pfennig-werth and Gillian Jacobs don't have the vocal resources. The great arias - Titania's "These are the forgeries of jealousy" and Oberon's "I know a bank where the wild thyme blows" - make hardly any impression.
There are two Oberons, the erotic warrior and compassionate observer of human follies. This cooler, stage manager Oberon, Pfennigwerth handles well, though he is still soft-spoken.
It's harder for Jacobs, who must segue from angry Mother Earth to playful seductress. Seeing her dolled up in flowing lingerie and silvered hair, you might have a fleeting thought of JonBenet Ramsey. Not that she or Gilbert admit any touch of prurience. But you can't miss the text's insistence that Titania is a sexy being. Downplaying that, Gilbert denatures her. And perhaps in order that hers and Oberon's words be heard, he leaves them static on stage.
This is a "Midsummer" in retreat from sex. In the frame story, Theseus (Robert Haley) is played as a friendly elder statesman. Though he speaks well the wisdom of the last scene, it's hard to imagine he ever captured his bride, Hippolyta (Robin Walsh), in battle. The tension between them in the opening scene is reduced to her mere touch of disdain.
If Gilbert's "Midsummer" isn't about sex, it doesn't much like conflict, either. Look at poor Egeus (the capable John LaGioia), frantic with frustration that his daughter won't marry as he insists. But when Theseus overrules him, Egeus has no response. Too often, Gilbert lowers the stakes.
The very young Puck of A.J. Bruno can't handle the language as well as Pfennigwerth or Jacobs (though he does about as well as Mickey Rooney in the 1935 film), but Gilbert gives him more to do physically, and he makes a sprightly presence in spiky red hair. Still, gone is any of the subversive, spicier Puck of recent decades.
At least the four foolish lovers play as though something important were at stake, and as a result their comedy is fresh and pleasing. Hermia and Lysander are especially fine - Christina Apathy proves the very opposite of her name, and Joey Collins handles Shakespeare's youthful, highly wrought poetry with wit and clarity. Aaron Hapold is an enthusiastic Demetrius, though Eve Holbrook's Helena suffers from unvaried voice and hand gestures.
The "rude mechanicals" - the comic workmen who imagine themselves actors - are an engaging lot, although I would have expected Don Perkins, Adam Greer, Nick Ruggeri, David Doepken and Zachary Mott to make stronger individual impressions.
Of course, they have to share the stage with a comic genius, Lamberts, in his Pittsburgh debut. Though I've seen him dominate a stage of skilled farceurs, here he fits nicely into the ensemble - and I wish he didn't. I wish Gilbert had set him loose. Instead, Lamberts is oddly constrained. It goes with the role that he has to play half of his play hidden by an ass's head. But then in the "Pyramus and Thisbe" segment, he's further hidden by the sort of joke costume (imagine Elmer Fudd as a Roman legionnaire) that you usually give to an actor who needs a costume to be funny for him.
Lamberts doesn't. In spite of being so muffled, he manages to act with his fingers, his belly, his toes - anything in view. Finally unencumbered, he does a brilliant comic death scene. (Characteristically, Gilberts has Greer play Thisbe's death scene straight.) And then, with one more chance to let loose his world-class clown, Gilbert leaves Lamberts in the back row while someone else does the final dance. I don't get it.
Nor do I get Susan Mickey's costumes, which are often lovely but flit irresolutely among styles. The Athenian court is in flowing robes, sort of Greek a la Bloomsbury, but Lysander and Demetrius look like fugitives from a slave revolt, unmarked by their wealth. The mechanicals seem dapper guys from the '20s, and the fairies are silvery Las Vegas sugarplums.
Titania has five attendant fairies who dance (Judy Conte, choreographer) and sing prettily, including the song Gilbert wrote for their finale, a charming children's roundelay. Oberon, though, doesn't have any attendants except Puck. Nor does Theseus, except the prissy Philostrate (Americus Rocco). I'm sure this "Midsummer" cost a bundle, but it looks slightly impoverished when Theseus doesn't have a servant to carry his pillows.
The best of Marjorie Bradley Kellogg's scenery is a courtly medallion that turns into a silvery moon. Her stylized forest is serviceable, but even though it's beautifully lit by Tom Sturge, it doesn't enchant. Michael Moricz's original music also fails to take off: Vaguely New Age, it never sharpens or excites, just flows pleasantly, largely unnoticed. James Capenos does pleasing tricks with the sound.
Maybe my expectation was too high. Gilbert delivers a tasty hors d'oeuvre, but it isn't Shakespeare's full-course feast.
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