Tonight I saw my first Shakespeare play of the year at the Colorado Shakespeare Festival, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was a warm night, but there was a forecast of possible rain so I brought my jacket. After I was on campus, the rain indicators were gone so I was a little annoyed that I had to carry my coat while I was walking around campus. It was a good thing, however, as we actually got rained on for a while, and they even called a pause in the play to let it stop and dry off the stage.
This is not my favorite play, mostly because of the scenes with the “mechanicals” which are supposed to be humorous, but I usually find tedious. Maybe I’ve just seen it too many times. I’m sure this was the height of hilarity in the 16 century. This production was set against a backdrop of 80’s pop music and the faeries were dressed like dancers from an MTV video of the era. Overall I enjoyed the play and the actors did a great job performing it. However, I felt there were things I liked and disliked about the production. For example, they switched the male and female role of the duke and his fiancée, which didn’t add any new dimension and was basically pointless; the role of Puck was played a very good actor, but his performance choice was to deliver his poetic lines in a machine gun, almost monotone way — it didn’t work for me; the mechanicals has some fun points, but overall I still found the whole story line tedious.
Overall, a fun evening out in the elements with a well executed play.
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