Review: Often-delightful ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ kicks off Shakespeare on the Square By Colin Seymour for the Mercury News
A romantic trip to Chichen Itza is the often-delightful result of Arclight Repertory Theatre’s marriage to the Mexican Heritage Society. The collaborators have given Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a Mayan love quadrangle, Mayan “rude mechanicals” and Puck — the rudest Mayan you’ll ever encounter. They coalesce persuasively at the Shakespeare on the Square Festival in downtown San Jose, as the Ushmal variety of fairy spellbinding enhances the familiar charms of one of literature’s most beloved comedies.
The production at San Pedro Theatre on the Square isn’t spellbinding, but its multi-cultural effects and accents are well-matched to the play, resulting in the Mexican artistic sensibility director David Koppel is hoping to convey at the confluence of dreams and reality. As conduits to those dreams, the Ushmals are pretty much like Elizabethan fairies, and sometimes that’s not pretty. Your view of the fairy community may be benign, but some see fairies as angels gone bad.
The Ushmals mix misdeeds and good deeds much as fairies everywhere do, a concept Koppel is determined to do proud. It’s a concept betrayed somewhat by the unredeeming qualities of the central character, the mercurial fairy Puck, whose job is to choreograph the ideal match-ups for the lovers and make sport of both his bosses and the menial laborers who humbly stage a skit for their padrone.
Puck doesn’t have to inspire affection to fulfill his duties to the play, but he isn’t usually played as obnoxiously as Brittney Mignano portrays him here. Her diabolical laugh in the wake of her misdeeds and mistakes tend to make her seem misogynistic in ways that don’t quite jibe with the tenor of the production, which otherwise is personified more by Sarah Shoshana David’s urbane grace (well, until she falls in love with a donkey) as the queen of the fairies.
Mignano also has trouble enunciating consistently over the loud hum of the top-story theater’s air-conditioning — without which the stifling resemblance to the Yucatan in late June would be authentic yet undesirable. Mignano moves brilliantly, though, and her physical manipulation of the sleeping paramours at the end of Act 3 is surprisingly touching.
The paramours are pleasingly cast. Demetrius (Ravi Soundararajan) and Lysander (Marc Tabor) are nothing alike, as the former is on edge and resembles a tech worker on Casual Friday, and the latter is long-haired, laid-back and wears a guayabera. You can also easily distinguish Helena (Fiona Lawson) from Hermia (Amy Wares) because the blonder one is a foot taller than the darker one. Lawson has the best moment with Helena ’s sensible reaction to Demetrius’ newfound regard for her. If you’re looking for portrayals here that will stand out among the many versions of this play that you might see in your lifetime, the cervezas-wielding campesinos of Piste will do it for you more than the fairies.
Mark Gelineau’s charisma commands the stage while he portrays Nick Bottom as weaver, actor and ass, though not in a notably Mayan way. William Donald Edwards makes up for that while commanding the other rude mechanicals as a leathery, ethereal Peter Quince. Daniel Norsberg makes the most of the distaff role in the “Pyramus & Thisby” skit and Robert Snedegar is formidable yet delicate as Wall in the skit. As for Jeff Orr as a myopic Snug and Arturo Dirzo as the simple Starveling, there’s something humbly, winningly rural-Mexican about them you must see to believe. They may not evoke the Yucatan, but they’re a collective archetype that endures even as Mexico becomes less homogenous. Anyone who doesn’t think Shakespeare would have loved seeing these characters thus portrayed doesn’t understand the transmutability of his art. “A Midsummer Night”s Dream” By William Shakespeare The upshot: Already-rich Mayan culture gets a boost from Shakespeare “” and vice-versa. When: Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. and Saturday matinees at 2 p.m. through June 27. Half-hour “Green Show” with folkloric dancing begins one hour before curtain rises. Where: Arclight Repertory Theatre”s Shakespeare on the Square (San Pedro Theatre on the Square, 29 N. San Pedro St ., San Jose). Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes, with one intermission. Tickets: $20, $15 students and ages 65 and older; pay what you can on Thursdays; 1-800-838-3006, www.brownpapertickets.com; www.arclightrep.org
