A Light and Playful ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’

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Photo via Facebook / SummerStage of Delafield

A Midsummer Night's Dream

Classic romantic comedy goes for a graceful tumble outdoors this month as SummerStage of Delafield launches itself through A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Director Dustin J. Martin keeps the energy light and playful in a production that focusses itself squarely on a silly sensibility and pours very real emotions of love around the edges to keep it all dramatically grounded.

The towering Brandon Haut is regally precise as the fairy king Oberon, who plots mischief with his servant Puck. An energetically expressive Michelle White juggles comic nuance on a number of levels in the role of Puck. Tasked with the charge of making a couple fall in love, Puck makes an honest mistake and things get weird.

The weird makes its way into the production with a fun mash-up of costuming. Costume designer Claire Kinder is given an enjoyably wide range of elements—from the graceful talons and regal contemporary business casual of Oberon to the impeccably poised goth girl look of his wife’s servant Moth and lots of distinctive, little elements in between.

The deeper drama that fills the comedy is vividly brought to the stage by Sydney Faris in the role of Helena.  Faris draws a gentle emotional complexity out of a lover who is initially ignored, but soon quickly pursued by two men in the forest. Nicholas Callan Haubner plays to a more complexity as Bottom the Weaver--an aspiring actor who is toyed with by the fairies. Typically, the play performed by Weaver and his colleagues can feel a bit clumsily tethered to the end of the comedy, by Haubner and company carry the end of the comedy through with impressive momentum.

SummerStage of Delafield’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through July 30 at Lapham Peak State Park. For ticket reservations, visit summerstageofdelafield.org.