Tuesday Night in Chelsea: The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective presents "A Midsummer Night's Dream" on Pier 64 at Hudson River Park

Tonight we went to the premiere of a charming production of a Woodstock-era A Midsummer Night's Dream imaginatively staged at a gorgeous space at the foot of Pier 64 by The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective under the direction of Steven Carl McCasland.

Actually, we think the space is part of Pier 63, and it was probably the most intimate setting we've ever seen for outdoor Shakespeare since a performance of Dream done by BACA (Brooklyn Arts and Cultural Association) in July 1970 in a corner of Prospect Park's Wollman Rink. Here the show was presented at Meg Webster's Stonefield, a sculpture installation of boulders selected for their special shapes and unusual sculptural qualities.

Some of the boulders are very colorful, some are concave, some craggy, one is very tall, another shaped somewhat like a boat, all are arranged to show their unique characteristics and individuality. Most of the audience sat on some of the large stones as the cast enacted the familiar story -- probably the classic summer outdoor Shakespeare show, which we've seen about eight times in various parks already -- around them.

We were close to the dreamy-at-dusk Hudson River, and sunset and the surroundings made the magic and theme of Midsummer Night's Dream come alive in a different way than we'd ever seen the play done before.

In addition to being intimate, the Beautiful Soup's Dream also moved quickly. At about 75 minutes, they'd obviously cut out decent chunks of Shakespeare's text, but we couldn't tell, despite what is (or should be) our familiarity with the text.

The cast is uniformly excellent, and the only difficulties we had were the times, not often, when a cast member was simply too far away from the boulder where we sat for the sound to carry clearly amid all the noise of the pier and Twelfth Avenue.

We'd seen other nontraditional gender casting in the past, as in the Pulse Ensemble's having Oberon and Titania as two powerful gay men earlier this summer, but we'd never seen Bottom played by a woman before watching Anne Richmond's very funny turn as the weaver-turned-donkey.

Aside from the slapstick, her befuddlement and naivete exude a sweetness, both in her rehearsals for and performances in the mechanicals' play within a play and Bottoms' scenes with the lovestruck Titania (a flighty, passionate Rebecca De Ornelas).

Isaiah Tanenbaum played a nicely hippie-ish droll Puck in a dungaree jacket over an I ♥ NEW YORK t-shirt (if we're talking Woodstock 1969, that mid-70s symbol's actually an anachronism),

and the four young lovers all had great comic timing and lots of passion, the two qualities they need most. Emily Floyd plays Helena as a young woman so used to being overlooked that she's most hilarious in her consternation at suddenly being the love object of two guys. Patrick Shane's Lysander is charismatic and edgily dynamic although the character is a bit more Grease than Hair).

Hermia (Mallory Berlin) is a bit haughty and humorously contrary, as when she can turn on a dime from expressing her extreme sexual longing for Lysander to practically ordering him to "to lie yet further off" when the runaway couple first sleep in the woods. As Demetrius, Jordan Tierney is winningly nerdy, petulant, and the kind of pain in the neck guy you end up liking; he's a good foil for the other three young people.

 

The working class actors who perform the unintentionally laughable melodrama Pyramus and Thisbe to celebrate the multiple weddings at Dream's end are, in addition to Bottom, a colorful bunch of burnouts and freaks. Led by the most staid of the bunch, Peter Quince (Charles Baker, who exuded shabby dignity in last year's Hudson Warehouse production of Taming of the Shrew, the amateur thespians include David Marx as Tom Snout, appropriately blockheaded as he plays a wall; an adorably shy but game Salvatore Casto as a Snug the Joiner managing to eke out his roars as the play's supposedly fearsome lion;

Leslie Crincoli as the flustered good trouper Robin Starveling, holding her lantern to be the moonshine; and the winning Dom Crincoli, who moves from his female impersonation as Francis Flute playing Thisbe to strap on his guitar and serve as the play's balladeer.

We actually didn't realize until we saw the credits that Samantha Mercado-Tudda and Dennis Del Bene who exuded such dignity and sophistication as the regal Hippolyte and Theseus were the same actors playing the flighty (literally) fairies Mustardseed and Cobweb.

Dennis Del Bene, in his no-nonsense business suit, played Egeus as a petty tyrant who's smart enough to know when to bend. And we liked Frank Ugochukwu's thoughtful and sexy interpretation of Oberon, king of the fairies, both matched his queen Titania's less cerebral and more impulsive passions but who managed to step back, and along with Puck, seemed to join the audience -- an enthusiastic group who just about fit in the "theater" of the Stonefield space (though clearly some enchanted passersby on foot and bike stop and stood on the periphery to stay to the end).

Director Steven Carl McCasland, artistic director of the Beautiful Soup Theater Collective, managed to create an economical, warm Midsummer Night's Dream whose virtues were evident on the first night of performances. The next show is on Thursday at 7 p.m., and then at the same time on Tuesday, August 21; Thursday, August 23; Friday, August 24; and finally, on Saturday August 25 at both 1 p.m. and 7 p.m.

As the troupe's website notes,

Exploring classics and re-visiting musicals that never reached their pinnacle, The Soup chooses a charitable organization whose mission matches the themes of the show at end. The profits made at the box office, along with donations collected by actors after each performance, are donated to that charity. With four to five shows a year, The Beautiful Soup Theater Collective continues to be an active force in community growth.

We're very grateful we got to see tonight's show.

Monday Night in Harlem: Pulse Ensemble Theatre's 8th Annual Harlem Summer Shakespeare presents "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Riverbank State Park

Tonight we enjoyed the first preview performance of a deliciously audacious production of A Midsummer Night's Dream presented by Pulse Ensemble Theatre in the gorgeous surroundings of Harlem's Riverbank State Park.

Directed by Pulse Ensemble Theatre's artistic director Alexa Kelly and featuring an adventurous cast including the wonderful Brian Richardson as Bottom, this Midsummer Night's Dream is not afraid to be outrageous and over the top, and that made the performance a whole lot of fun, even in an initial preview where they're probably still trying to work out the kinks a bit.

Still, you wouldn't have been disappointed, and we weren't, although we'd really enjoyed the last two productions in what's now the Eighth Annual Harlem Summer Shakespeare experience: we were lucky to see Macbeth in 2010 and As You Like It last year, and this comedy -- probably the one most closely associated with summer open-air Shakespeare -- seemed just as vibrant to us.

The last two years we went to the Harlem Summer Shakespeare shows at the park's gorgeous amphitheater setting in mid-August, around Harlem Week. This August, however, the company will be in Scotland, not to perform "the Scottish play" of Shakespeare's again, but because they've been selected for the famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where they'll be performing A Man for All Times: W. E. B. DuBois (we've taught DuBois' The Souls of Black Folk several times, having appreciated him and his work since we first came across it in Prof. Dan Mayers' Afro-American Literature I class back in Brooklyn College in 1973).

A Man For All Times: W. E. B. DuBois from Brian Richardson on Vimeo.

So obviously Alexa Kelly, Brian Richardson, and others will be elsewhere in August. We were happy that Pulse brought Shakespeare to Harlem early this summer, and this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream will be playing previews tomorrow and Thursday and then Wednesdays through Sundays from July 6-22 at 8 p.m. The amphitheater is comfortable, but you might want to bring a pillow and tonight we wish we'd had some insect repellant, as not only the onstage fairies were flying around.

This Dream's Athenians exist in contemporary times, and you know that right away by their dress and the Lord & Taylor shopping bags carried by the noble, stylish lesbian couple, Thesius (Kelsey Arendt) and Hippolyta (Maria Franklin), about to celebrate their state (and state-approved) wedding. (Nnoema Nkuku is hilarious as Philostrate, their mistress of revels, sending up the stock movie role of the harried servant confidante).

Some productions have the actors playing the royal Theseus and Hippolyte double as the king and queen of the fairies, Oberon and Titania, but here the fairy monarchs are both men, flamboyant in their powers and sexualized costumes, with Steven J. West (Oberon) and Karim Sekou standouts as unforgettable as the best vogue dancers you'll see outside the legendary "houses" of uptown gay ballrooms.

Thia Stephan is splendid playing Puck as a delectable drag queen, with Mariah Franklin, Kerianne Furgerson, and Denise M. Whalen as outrageous fairies with outré outfits and neon hair offer wonderful support to her and to Oberon.

The spectacle of the play will appeal to anyone, especially kids, and Bob Miller deserves special credit for the wonderfully imaginative costumes.

The two groups of human characters -- the four young lovers and Hermia's father Egeus, and the rude mechanicals putting on the play -- are also well-cast, with the very talented Elliott Mayer, who we said last year played two As You Like It characters "with startling difference and sublime bits of business" does the same thing here as a cranky, lame Egeus and a blue collar, outer borough Peter Quince.

The laborers here definitely are New York City union types -- "What do we want? A job! When do we want it? Now!" they chant as they bear their protest signs. They view the play they're putting on for the wedding, Pyramus and Thisbe, as first and foremost a job and a paycheck, and all of them adopt Noo Yawk accents and mannerisms, and they are adept at physical comedy.

In some productions of Dream, you can get a little restless during the play-within-a-play, but this one is very funnily played and fast-moving. Kudos to (again) Nneoma Nkuku (Snug), Greg Nussen (Flute), John L. Payne (Snout) and Brian Richardson (Bottom), whose scenes with Karim Sekou as a potion-besotted Titania are not only funny but touching -- with the interesting frisson and added resonance of both Bottom and Titania being played by black men. We've now seen Brian Richardson interpret Bottom, Jaques, and Macbeth, and we're really impressed.

The actors playing the four young lovers chase their mixed-up midsummer passions through the magical forest also excel at physical comedy, and there are some wonderful bits of business in their interactions. There's a buoyancy to the way they portray Helena (Jacklyn Collier), Hermia (Sharone Halevy), Lysander (Blaine Smith) and Demetrius (a very fussy Geoffrey Hillback, but the essential sweetness in their characters is never lost.

The lighting design by Steve O'Shea was effective, more so than we've seen before at Riverside Park, though at this time of year, night descended a bit later. The sound problems we've noticed before are minimized, but at times were slightly disconcerting.

However, that hardly mattered. We very much liked Alexa Kelly's conception of A Midsummer Night's Dream, last produced by Pulse Ensemble Theatre several years ago and obviously totally reconceived to good effect.

To be able to sit in the Riverbank State Park amphitheater and be surrounded by the waters of the Hudson, the towers of New Jersey and the George Washington Bridge in the distance, ships and boats slowly going past: it made going to see the quintessential summer Shakespeare comedy that much more special. We're grateful we got to see this performance.

Saturday Afternoon in Fort Greene: Curious Frog Theatre Company presents "A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Scavengers" at Fort Greene Park

The first outdoor production of Shakespeare we ever saw was as a teenager forty years ago - on Thursday evening, July 23, 1970, to be exact (this is why you should keep a diary too) - when BACA Repertory presented A Midsummer Night's Dream in Prospect Park at Wollman Rink.

You'd think after seeing so many stagings of Dream over the years - just last year, by the Continuum Company in Von King Park in Bed-Stuy and by Hudson Warehouse in Riverside Park, and the year before, by the Piper Theatre in Park Slope's Washington Park - we'd be jaded or bored by now, especially since in the past week alone we've already seen five Shakespeare plays in Brooklyn parks.

But we can honestly say that today we were still just as excited and wide-eyed as ever as we watched Curious Frog Theatre Company's A Midsummer Night's Dream: The Scavengers late this afternoon on a grassy hill looking toward the Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument in Fort Greene Park.

Directed by Reneé Rodriguez, whose Romeo and Juliet we admired last summer, this Dream is special in a lot of ways, more impressive for the fact that we've already seen more than a dozen productions of the comedy over the years.

This staging, set within the frame of a fraternity/sorority scavenger hunt with a cast of bright-eyed, enthusiastic, charming and rowdy actors

who appeared young enough to be undergrads, was fast-paced, action-packed (the fight scenes were the longest, toughest and best we've ever seen in a Shakespeare comedy), and funny presentation.

The fairies in the play are still real fairies, but the mechanicals ineptly putting on the play-within-the-play, "Pyramus and Thisbe," are members of the college support staff: Bottom seems to be a low-level assistant coach, and others are workers from the cafeteria, custodial staff, secretarial pool or security guards.

It's a nice conceit, and the concept of the scavenger hunt, while giving Shakespeare's text primacy, nicely envelopes the comedy in a hectic but fun competition; every once in a while, contestants - a boy and girl paired with matching-color T-shirts with insignias of their three-Greek-letter affiliations - runs by in the background, hunting their next item.

And why not Greek? Shakespeare's characters are young Athenians, after all. Hippolyta and Theseus seem to be a couple overseeing the event; those of us who work at universities know they probably have the title of Director of Greek Life.

It was one of the most gorgeous days of the summer, with a shining sun but no oppressive heat and humidity. The cast members, as at all the Shakespeare-in-the-park productions we've seen this week (or ever) had to compete with surrounding sounds - there was some sort of big event at the monument - but with the clear, distinct voices of the actors and the high level of activity "onstage," there really didn't seem to be any distractions.

A Midsummer Night's Dream has a large cast, and here they were uniformly excellent and worked well together. As in many productions, the actors playing Theseus and Hippolyta, whose royal marriage (in the text, it's royal anyway) is celebrated at the end of the play (along with the marriages of the young people once the "dream" of the enchanted forest is untangled and set right), also play the royal fairy couple Oberon and Titania.

Michael Kennen Miller brings athletic grace and playful determination to the role of Oberon, and his scenes with a slinky and sultry Edie Monroy as Helena (both of them exposing, or appearing to, lots of flesh) are sexy and funny. Puck here is a loose-limbed, pigtailed, slinky and also nearly-naked Krystine Summers (she doubles at the end as a jive-talking campus activities director Philostrate), who gives a nice twist to her line reading of "Lord, what fools these mortals be!"

As the four young lovers caught in real and magic-induced complicated triangles and quadrangles, Angela Sharp (Hermia), Brandi Bravo (Helena), Alex Gould (Demetrius) and Andrew Sanford (Lysander), excel at physical comedy and action while preserving the wit of their poetry.

Their disputes and chases in the forest - nominally the locale for the college students' scavenger hunt - are little masterpieces of comic timing.

The working-class "actors" in the hilariously bad play also are skillful at comedy, though of the broader sort, with (truly) funny faces and slapstick, over-the-top gestures. A frustrated Petra Quince (Tai Verley), slightly smarter than her crew, has to contend with this melange of goofballs and misfits: Flute (Manuel de la Portilla), a slob who has to use a horrible falsetto and garish blond wig to play the female lover Thisbe; the wimpy, simpering Starveling (Christiana Little), who needs her stuffed animal to keep stagefright at bay as she holds a flashlight to mimic moonlight;

Snout, the dim security guard who "presenteth a wall" dressed in a brick-like dashiki; and the rubber-faced, too-eager Snug (a very funny Sora Baek), who roars the part of the lion.

The standout in the most important role among the rustics is Brent Yoshikami, the outrageously self-important and narcissistic Bottom. He's really funny, both in rehearsals and playing the lover Pyramus in the "tedious" play-within-a-play, and his scenes with a smitten-by-magic Titania (Monroy at her best) once he's turned into an ass, are priceless.

The scavenger hunt ends with a slo-mo (very slo-mo) race to the finish line to the music from Chariots of Fire. It's very funny, and of course our four prinicipals are bested by the red-T-shirted pair played by Baek and McGhee (de la Portilla and Little also double as scavengers).

It's just one of many inspired touches by director Rodriguez, who with her cast and crew, have created a unique Midsummer Night's Dream.

The play can be seen at Astoria Park's Water Walk tomorrow and over the next four weekends all over the city, in Prospect Park, Waterside Plaza, Pelham Bay Park, Inwood Hill Park, Battery Park and Queensbridge Park. We're grateful to Curious Frog Theatre Company for again bringing top-notch classic theater to some underserved communities around New York City.