A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream is one of William Shakespeare's best known and most frequently performed plays. At the start of the play, four young Athenians leave the city for the forest; two of them are a couple eloping to escape the will of their families, the other two the unhappy would-be partners who follow them. Meanwhile, a group of mechanical laborers convene in the forest to practice a stage play to be performed at an upcoming royal marriage. Oberon, the King of the fairies, conspires with his servant Puck to undertake two tasks: resolve the discord between the couples and punish his wife Titania for her stubbornness and possible infidelity, accomplishing both with magic derived from a forest flower. Puck mistakenly applies the magic to all the wrong parties, throwing the lovers, the mechanicals and the fairy world into disarray.
While the play is generally categorized as a comedy in the tradition of the romantic farce, this production by Theater B, under the direction of Brad Delzer, strikes a somewhat darker tone, emphasizing the potentially frightening nature of the forest creatures, the uncontrolled energies of the forest and its capricious and volatile sense of justice.
