Tag: Midsummer Night’s Dream review

ASP’s Rowdy ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Flips the Bard’s Gem on its Breakdancing Head

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Cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Photos: Nile Scott Studios

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project at Mosesian Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal St., Watertown through May 4.

By Shelley A. Sackett

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of those plays that is firmly etched in most people’s long-term memory banks, whether as a first introduction to Shakespeare in high school or as one of scores of film and theatrical productions. There are countless riffs on the play, from the sci-fi A Midsummer Night’s Gene to recently produced The Donkey Dream. Even The Beatles got in on the act in their 1964 TV special, “Around the Beatles,” when they played the “Pyramus and Thisbe” section of the play to an audience of hecklers and moonstruck fans, especially appropriate for this comedy play within a play. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SvREt_w_KOE )

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Everyone Wants Some in  ASP’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”

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Cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Photos: Nile Scott Studios

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, by William Shakespeare. Directed by Maurice Emmanuel Parent. Presented by Actors’ Shakespeare Project, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown through May 4.

Cast of Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”Photos: Nile Scott Studios

By Michele Markarian

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind”, insists Helena (Deb Martin), a maid musing on the unreasonable and unpredictable foibles of attraction. The minds in this production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” are busy at work, their bodies preening and pursuing the objects of their lusty desires, a kind of Beltane in the middle of summer. This vigorous production is set in a disco, with all the dangers and dreams that go with it. 

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This is a ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Worth Seeing Multiple Midsummer Nights

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By CJ Williams

 

‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ – Directed by Patrick Swanson; Written by William Shakespeare; Stage Management by Marsha Smith;  Composition & Sound Design by David Reiffel; Set Design by Eric Levenson; Puppetry  & Design by Elizabeth Rocha; Costume Design by Jessica Pribble; Lighting Design by Deb Sullivan. Presented by Actor’s Shakespeare Project at the Multicultural Center, 41 2nd Street Cambridge, MA through June 4.

 

Actors’ Shakespeare Project’s take on “Midsummer Night’s Dream” is both a faithful and thoroughly up-to-date rendition of a classic. But that’s what Shakespeare, performed and produced well, is in a nutshell: timeless. Not every cast or production team can pull that kind of rabbit out of the theatrical hat, though – even the best productions of the Bard often end up slogging through a sad stodgy seriousness in using the centuries old Elizabethan cant, costume, and anything else historical they can get their hands on. (Either that, or they blow it all on a modern spin that mangles the wordplay and subtlety of the language.)

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