Review: ATC's Outdoor MIDSUMMER Is Electrifying Fun

Aside from sporadic Chickspeare ventures in the NoDa Brewing parking lot and a tentative CPCC Shakespeare on the Green production up at their Cato campus two summers ago, we haven't seen anybody commit to an annual series of outdoor Bard since the Queen City's second Charlotte Shakespeare bit the dust in 2014. If you've been hankering for some good Shakespearean comedy under the moon, with a refreshing beverage in your beach chair's cup holder and a trusty cooler at your side, the long drought is over.

Actor's Theatre of Charlotte has made good on their promise, announced at the dawn of their new residency relationship with Queens University, that they would launch an annual Midsummer Nights @ Queens series, starting with the most logical choice, A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM. Now Shakespeare hasn't exactly been in Actor's Theatre's wheelhouse during its first 30 years. Nor has any classic playwright dating further back than Edward Albee. Perhaps for that reason, ATC executive director Chip Decker tamped down expectations when he first unveiled his plans, saying this would likely be a cooperative effort featuring students in the Queens U theatre program.

He lied. Directed by Chester Shepherd, this MIDSUMMER is as professional as any homegrown Shakespeare production we've seen in the Metrolina area since the first Charlotte Shakespeare folded in the early '90s. Even though admission is free, production values are not at all cheap. Costume designs and props by Carrie Cranford are literally electrifying in a few instances and, while there isn't any scenic design, Shepherd leads his players up and down, up and down, taking advantage of a bush here and a tree there, borrowing the stone stairway and entrance to campus building for the Athens scenes and kidnapping a toddler from the audience when we adjourn to the forest and the fairies.

That's not to say that there aren't some serious economies, but they don't include forswearing playbills, which are handed out to audience members by wingèd ushers. Although the roles of Athens royals Theseus and Hippolita are often doubled with those of Oberon and Titania, the fairy king and queen, here we're confronted with an orgy of doubling - nine actors in 18 roles. Except for Peter Finnegan as Bottom, all the mechanicals are moonlighting as Athenian nobles.

So the looney lovers who are confounded and enchanted in the woods by the fairies cannot mock the mechanicals when they present their "Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe" - they're performing it, you see. Their lines disappear with them, part of a shrinking process that yields a playing time of less than 100 minutes. That's another economy. Anybody who has memorized the lines uttered by Peaseblossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustardseed will notice that these fairies have also been vaporized - or compressed into the generic Fairy played by Kerstin VanHuss.

Steven Levine is certainly manly and commanding as Theseus and Oberon, but he is upstaged by the antics of Sarah Molloy as Puck and the misplaced amorousness of Nonye Obichere as Titania - not to mention their outré costumes. Obichere has only to swish her illuminated blue cape to dazzle us, and Molloy's outfit is even wilder than Bottom's. Of course, Finnegan's hambone bravura must begin before Puck mischievously transforms Bottom into an ass, and we benefit from the minimalist design decision not to obscure the actor's face when Titania plies her charms.

Finnegan really takes over when he stars as Pyramus for Theseus and Hippolita. More than one actor has made the death of Pyramus into a full meal. Finnegan aims for a banquet.

Among the befuddled lovers, the women get the most comical opportunities. Iesha Nyree as Hermia and Anna Royal as Helena both make good on their mightily distressed episodes, and Shepherd hasn't erred in stressing the height differential between them in his casting. With so much thunder stolen from their benighted partners, it's actually fortunate that Adam Griffin and Jonathan Ford, Demetrius and Lysander respectively, get to moonlight as mechanicals, Griffin as Snout and Ford as Flute.

The caution that free insect repellent was available at the theater site proved to be unnecessary on Saturday night, but in the early part of the evening, I found it welcome to have some cold liquid at hand. Microphones consistently operated well, so you can expect audibility to be less of a challenge than Elizabethan English. The plenitude of physical comedy supplies ample translation.

A couple of real concerns: handicapped access begins on Selwyn Avenue, to the left of the Queens U traffic circle, not in the traffic circle itself. And counterintuitively, the worst seating is in the middle of the greensward facing the stage. The further you sit toward either side, the more easily you'll see past obstacles in the center, namely a table, a slatted bench, a soundboard, and the technician standing over them.

Get there early, select a good sightline, and your Midsummer Night @ Queens should be quite dreamy.

Photos by Fenix Fotography and Perry Tannenbaum

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