Cozy Comic Chaos in ‘Another Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Expand

Another Midsummer Night's Dream poster

William Shakespeare populated the script of A Midsummer Night’s Dream with so many interesting characters and relationships that it’s always a bit sad to see the final bows at the end of any performance. Local playwright and director Liz Shipe allows audiences a bit more time with a couple of characters from the romantic fantasy as she presents Another Midsummer Night’s Dream. Set hundreds of years after the original, Shipe focuses on a couple of characters from the play in the present day. 

Cara Johnston is irrepressibly engaging as the fairy Peaseblossom. Her old friend Puck (Noah Silverstein) has run afoul of the will of the fairy queen Titania. She still holds a grudge against him for playing a trick on her many years ago in the forest outside of Athens, but he’s also been quite reluctant to perform his duties as a fairy who inspires mortals. The one artist he’d ever really collaborated with was William Shakespeare and that was a long time ago too. Titania threatens to turn him into a donkey if he can’t prove to her that he’d inspired true love on the works of William Shakespeare. Peaseblossom is called upon to help him do so. 

Shipe’s script is fun, irreverent and heartfelt. It plays a bit like a Reduced Shakespeare Company show with various plots from Shakespeare’s works translated into comedy sketches. The Taming of the Shrew is staged like WWE-style professional wrestling. Another romance is staged as a segment from The Dating Game and so on. It’s cute. Through it all, Johnson and Silverstein maintain a firm sense of emotional connection that serves as a cozy heart to an often-dizzying spin of comic chaos. 

The Available Players’ Another Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through July 21 with Optimist Theatre’s Shakespeare in the City program at various outdoor locations in and around Milwaukee.  For dates, times and locations, visit optimisttheatre.org.