Sean Power - Reviews & Interviews

A Midsummer Night's Dream
3 Jun 1993 - The Toronto Sun:
"Dream Weaver" (by John Coulbourn)

Dream Weaver

John Coulbourn
THEATRE

STRATFORD - There are dreams - and then, there are dreams.

And in the canon of Shakespeare, it's no different, though the dream of which we speak is always the same - A Midsummer Night's Dream.

There have been many Dreams - sadly perhaps even a majority - that fade as soon as the lights come up, while others prove to be simply nightmares, Dreams best quickly forgotten.

Too rarely, considering how often the play is produced, there comes a Dream that lingers, filled with laughter, magic, lust or just sheer joy.

It was one of those latter variety that the Stratford Festival unveiled last night on their main stage, the third production of their 1993 opening week.

And while scholars and traditionists are almost certain to favor the deservedly lauded production of King John which preceded it, it will be this Dream nonetheless that will capture the minds and hearts of the general audience. Rarely has Shakespeare been this much fun.

Superbly directed by Joe Dowling there is no attempt here to force the play to say something the playwright did not intend.

Instead, working with designer Hayden Griffin and composer Keith Thomas, Dowling allows the play to say what it has always said, making it clearer to today's audience by imposing a more contemporary vision on it and cranking up the volume.

It's raunchy. It's irreverant. And it's delightful as sin for those prepared to relax and go in the direction that the superb ensemble leads them.

It's an ensemble as impressive for its credentials as for its unbounded skill and enthusiasm in bringing the play to raucous, bawdy life. From Wayne Best, cast as a facist Duke of Athens, and Alison Sealy-Smith, as his defiant, haughty bride, right on down to the least of the fairies, the cast delights at every turn.

But it is perhaps most impressive in the realm of the dream itself, with Colm Feore as a brooding Oberon, king of the Fairies and his willful queen Titania, lustily portrayed by Lucy Peacock. It is into their realm - a sensuous, suggestive inflatable forest - that the four confused lovers (Stephanie Morgenstern, Sean Power, Marc Ruel and a scene stealing Sheila McCarthy) wander, followed unwittingly by a group of amateur players, Qed by Ted Dykstra's Nick Bottom) for an evening of dark hilarity. But all is made well at the hands of an irreverant Puck, played by Frank Zotter, looking to assume the mantle laid down by the late Devine.

As the playwright himself suggests: If they offend, it is with their own good will.

And if they do offend, a bit of advice unavailable to the Bard. Take a valium, and chill out. You'll be glad you did.