stage
On April 23, William Shakespeare’s moldering corpse celebrated its 443rd year on this planet. The Bard’s body has little to hope for, besides one more year of slow decay. His body of work, on the other hand, can look forward to another year of life on stages around the world.
One such stage is situated within the Blackfriars Playhouse, a replica Elizabethan theater in downtown Staunton, where A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of two Shakespearean plays on the spring schedule. The Blackfriars staging of this solstice comedy, however, isn’t much of a birthday present. To the contrary, it might well set Shakespeare spinning in his grave. The performance is funny and engaging, but laughs don’t conceal serious problems with the production.
 No, he’s not the fairy queen: Henry Bazemore, Jr. does the deceased Bard proud as Oberon in the American Shakespeare Center’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. |
A Midsummer Night’s Dream is set in two parallel worlds—the Athenian court and the forested fairy kingdom. Like an expert tailor, Shakespeare seamlessly stitched together the two worlds, fashioning a trend-setting comedy. But it’s up to the performers how they wear the Bard’s couture, and the Blackfriars troupe wears it rather badly. Their Athens and their fairy kingdom come together like two clashing fabrics. The result? The thespian version of blavy.
The Athenians sport stiff business attire. The fairy king and his minion, Puck, call to mind stripped-down S&M versions of Darth Vader. The fairy queen vaguely resembles a troll doll and her coterie prances and squawks like a loosed coup of campy chickens. The acting, equally patchy, follows suit.
Admittedly, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a difficult play to stage. Shakespeare’s tailoring must be fitted just so for the performance to be a success. Nevertheless, I expected the Blackfriars troupe to live up to its reputation as a Shakespearean class act. Maybe their Julius Caesar, also on the playbill this spring, will redeem them and prove a suitable gift in whatever is left of the birthday Bard’s eyes. And then there’s always next year; Shakespeare isn’t going anywhere.
