A Whimsical Tumble with Shakespeare Overlooking the Lake

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Public Domain Review/Flickr

Shakespeare gets silly as Original Practices MKE presents a breezy outdoor staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum. J.J. Gatesman harnesses an enjoyably pleasant chaos in the last light of the summer sun. Audience members are encouraged to boo, cheer or otherwise engage in the action in a thoughtfully playful summer party atmosphere overlooking the lake.

A talented cast tumbles through a fast-paced early evening of Shakespearean euphoria. Actors perform physical comedy from scripts printed on tiny, tidy scrolls. A prompter seated in the audience keeps the action running at a quick pace when actors and scripts get entangled. The physical comedy pounds its way through Shakespeare’s lines, conjuring a silliness that often overpowers nuance. The levity is amplified to pleasantly deafening levels in a whimsically feverish rush through a classic.

Gatesman plays the fairy king Oberon to an engagingly jovial Brittany Curran as Queen Titania. Rose Grizzell has impressively organic comic instincts as Oberon’s servant Puck. Maura Atwood and Kellie Wambold bring wide-eyed expressive physicality to the stage as Helena and Hermia—mortal girls who find their romantic aspirations entangled in the love magic of the fairies. Atwood’s enchantingly warm, subtle body language plays clever contrast to Wambold’s bold, beautiful, sweeping comic movements. No one is bolder or more aggressively energetic than Zach Woods in the role of Nick Bottom, who becomes the unwitting victim of strange magics. As the character of Bottom is already a blustery actor caught-up in circumstances beyond his control. Given a character who is already amplified, Woods has the opportunity to play the silliness of the performance to maximum effect. He does so with impressively explosive humor. 

Through Aug. 22 at Villa Terrace Decorative Arts Museum, 2220 N. Terrace Ave. Tickets are $10 at the door.