Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream That Offers a True Summer Evening Delight

One of the pleasures of a worthy revival is the feeling that you’re in the presence of artists who know what they’re doing, who you can trust to be able to help navigate an audience through a potentially challenging text. Such is the alchemy happening up at Marcus Garvey Park with Classical Theatre of Harlem’s new production of William Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. For those who felt forlorn about the prospect of no Shakespeare in the Park this summer as renovations of the Delacorte Theater in Central Park continue, here’s a sparkling reminder that they were hardly the only game in town anyway.

Broadly speaking, the play alternates between three realms: the earthly, the mythical, and the meta-theatrical. Romantic entanglements make up much of the earthly action, with Hermia (Ra’mya Latiah Aikens) in love with Lysander (Hiram Delgado), to the disappointment of Demetrius (Brandon Carter), who ignores the affections of Hermia’s best friend, Helena (Noah Michal).

It’s the gods and fairies—specifically Oberon (Victor Williams), king of the fairies, with the help of Puck (Mykal Kilgore)—who inadvertently meddle in these affairs when all four make their way into a forest just outside Athens. For his part, Oberon is feuding with his queen, Titania (Jesmille Darbouze), over possession of a young boy, their tiff finding an earthly analogue in the tensions between the soon-to-be-wed Theseus (also Williams) and Hippolyta (also Darbouze).

Meanwhile, a troupe of actors aspire to perform a play at Theseus and Hippolyta’s wedding, among them Nick Bottom (Jaylen D. Eashmond), who also gets ensnared in Oberon’s machinations by getting turned into a donkey. (Allen Gilmore, Carson Elrod, Olivia London, Deidre Staples, and León Tak round out the cast.)

As was the case with his previous Shakespeare production for the company—a Twelfth Night starring Kara Young two years ago—director Carl Cofield has transposed the action to a distinctly African-American milieu, with a Harlem Renaissance nightclub subbing in for Athens. The concept may be more cosmetic than anything else, but it certainly gives his creative team plenty of room to flex their muscles.

Dance is once again a major component, with choreographer Dell Howlett coming up with exuberant routines before and after the show as well as during scene transitions. Costume designer Mika Eubanks and wig, hair, and makeup designer Earon Chew Nealey style the actors in a wide variety of eye-popping suits, dresses, and headpieces. Even more effective than Christopher & Justin Swader’s scenic design are Alan C. Edwards’s lighting, Frederick Kennedy’s sound design/music (including live and recorded versions of classic tunes by George Gershwin and Duke Ellington), Brittany Bland’s projections, and Samantha Shoffner’s props in bringing us into this magical environment with relatively bare means.

But this production does not live or die by its concept. What impresses most is the degree to which Cofield and his cast have clearly absorbed the Shakespearean idiom and are able to present it to the audience in ways that are consistently clear and direct.

Cofield’s vision is most noticeable in the modulated ways he has directed the cast to sharply delineate the play’s three realms. Whereas Aikens, Delgado, Carter, and Michal play their characters for psychological realism, Williams and Darbouze bring a regal quality to their scenes as Oberon and Titania, with Kilgore delighting us with his fey bemusement as Puck. And Eashmond, Gilmore, and the rest of the so-called “rude mechanicals” are encouraged to ham it up in their performances in ways that suggest enthusiastic amateurs hopelessly but amusingly trying to emulate the grand Shakespearean thespians of old.

The result is a Midsummer Night’s Dream that may not necessarily have fresh insights to impart about this oft-produced play, but which offers something just as worthy of celebration: the enlivening spectacle of a cast and crew putting across a classic work with seemingly effortless skill, style, and passion. A more purely enjoyable way to spend a hot summer evening in New York City is difficult to imagine.

Note: The production’s advertising materials have trumpeted the fact that comedian Russell Peters is making his stage debut as Bottom, but as of this publication, he is only scheduled to play eight performances through the rest of the run, most of them during its last full week.