It was a perfect night for outdoor theater, and the fare couldn't have been more fitting--A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare's magic tomfoolery right there on stage before our eyes and ears, the bard at his goofiest on our own mid-summer night.
It was, as advertised, a scaled-down version, meant to cut away much of the silliness that's only silliness, so that's what's left is nothing more or less than the silliness of the plot: fairies armed with magic dust to make both men and women fools. Like Hamlet, Midsummer Night's Dream includes "a play within the play," but this one is madcap madness by a cast pulled directly from keystone cops. It's laugh-a-minute Shakespeare, and if you can't follow the dialogue, no matter. Soon enough some bananas thing will happen right before your eyes. You'll get it. Just don't be afraid to laugh out loud.
The woman I was sitting beside--the woman I normally sit beside--had her own reason for fun. She was one of the two women chased madly by love-poisoned suitors in a performance of Midsummer Night long, long ago--I'll not give the number but will suggest that the tally goes beyond a half-century.
No matter, she was in this madness herself all those years before, and while much of the score back then had departed her memory, there was enough of the practices and the performances to enchant her once again, not simply with the nuttiness afoot in Shakespeare's greatest folly, but her own role, so long ago, in the circus.
I couldn't help liking it too, thinking of her, 17 years old, dressed out like an ancient Greek maiden and pursued by lovesick men. Cute. It was.
Sometimes you just can't help but give thanks for sweet diversions like the madness of a Midsummer Night.
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