Midsummer!

Midsummer! calls itself a reinterpretation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but it is really a slightly adapted, abridged and simplified version of the play. The rewriting does make it more accessible, and there is some strong acting, but the production is much more traditional than its framing suggests, or its venue in the Assembly's spiegeltent might have allowed.

The design is one of its strongest features. The costumes are excellent and accented by immersive and sickly lighting design. The gender reversal of Oberon and Titania adds a little modernisation, while the character development is handled well. The players do an expert job of bringing desire and debauchery into the woods of Athens.

But its biggest weakness is the comedy. The Mechanicals are played too straight, and the laughs suffer for it. That leaves the production caught between adaptation and reinterpretation: modernised in places, typical in others, but never truly transformed as the bard intended. There is plenty to like here, but it does not really deliver on its pitch.

Midsummer! by CMU Center for New Work & Play On Shakespeare. Credit Mackenzie Breeden.