Metro Pulse/Backstage/A Midsummer Night's Dream

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What:
A Midsummer Night�s Dream, produced by the Smoky Mountain Shakespeare Festival

When:
Wednesdays-Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 7:30 p.m. through July 7

Where:
Pellissippi State

Cost:
$8-$10. Call 539-PLAY for further information.

This outdoor production grooves on the Bard

by Paige M. Travis

If he could only hear about the current production of A Midsummer Night's Dream being performed by the Smoky Mountain Shakespeare Festival, William Shakespeare would be rolling in his grave. Rolling with laughter, that is. In the hands of director Charles R. Miller and a professional cast culled from across the country, this seemingly innocent and amusing play (read by high schoolers as a gentle introduction to the Bard) has been transformed into a wild and uproarious adventure that's being enjoyed by viewers of all ages down on the lawn at Pellissippi State.

This play is Shakespeare's fanciful diversion in which Hermia is betrothed to Demetrius but would rather marry Lysander. Her friend Helena is in love with Demetrius, but he only has eyes for Hermia. One midsummer's night, the four find themselves in the forest, two escaping to be married in a nearby town and the other two in hot pursuit. At the behest of fairy king Lord Oberon (Barry Delaney), Puck (Keland Scher) is sent to anoint Demetrius's eyes to make him love Hermia, only he gets the wrong guy and hijinks ensue. Don't worry about getting confused about who's in love with whom. The campy and downright adorable performances of the four lovers—Kristin Wiegand as Hermia, Colin Trahan as Lysander, Timothy Andres Pabon as Demetrius and Candace Thompson as Helena—speak volumes even when the dialogue gets heavy. These actors do a great job of using body language and facial expressions to give their words impact. Trahan's lovesick puppy dog expression is priceless, and Thompson is especially clever (and not whiny) when she's suddenly pursued by both men and convinced they are making fun of her.

Presented in '60s style Technicolor with Sergeant Pepper and Woodstock-era costumes, the play is set in a mystically trippy forest with rolling staircases and trap doors. A clowning Puck sets the scene with pre-show juggling and audience participation shenanigans. He is the show's mascot of sorts, and he wields Shakespeare's language as well as he tosses flame-tipped sticks.

To keep up with the theme a few '60s references, like peace signs and "Groovy," are thrown in for good measure, but they never seem overly gratuitous or distracting. The girls' block print (think Mondrian) dresses and poofy hairdos, plus the male fairies' seriously fringed and wigged-out hippie get-ups, represent the wackiness shared by the love generation and this play. Songs by the Beatles provide the pre-show soundtrack and are used to great effect within the play, as when "Good Day Sunshine" is played as the sleeping revelers are about to awake after the night's adventure.

Since Shakespeare likes to have at least two plots going at once, we are given the mechanicals—the clowns whose antics provide the audience more basely humorous distraction from all the lovey-dovey gushing provided by the lovers. Frankly, these slapstick goofballs were never very funny on paper. As the Stooges leave me cold, so did the mechanicals. But I have been won over. Led by a swaggering Dan Kenney as Bottom, this band of merry-makers presents a play in honor of Theseus and Hippolyta's upcoming wedding. Kenney's delivery is so un-Shakespearean, so original and captivating that he brings an incredible amount of life to a character who could be portrayed as merely an oafish fool. (It's a great clever touch that in their first scene the mechanicals wear mechanic's jumpsuits.)

The mechanicals' final presentation—the tale of Pyramus and Thisbe—is as hilarious as any Monty Python skit or your favorite example of slapstick buffoonery. Men dressed as women, wayward bosoms, mis-spoken words, a death scene that won't die: this act had every member of the audience in stitches. Old Bill himself probably never guessed he had ever written anything so potentially funny.

Now in its third season, the Smoky Mountain Shakespeare Festival is gaining more regional and even national notoriety: the professional company was recently acknowledged with nine other Shakespeare companies in an article in the Wall Street Journal. Thanks to an agreement that benefits everyone involved, the company is housed at the Hardin Valley campus of Pellissippi State Technical Community College. I feel the need to stress that this is a professional production. Maybe people fear amateur theater or badly-done Shakespeare, but there's a certain face people make when you mention a play being done at Pellissippi, like these are teenagers reading cue cards on a Styrofoam stage. There's nothing wrong with that, or wrong with student-produced Shakespeare. But this is neither of those things; it's a well-trained company whose goal is to produce Shakespeare (and Cyrano de Bergerac later in the summer, plus their ongoing program with the public schools). This production is top-notch, high-class, grade-A quality, regardless of where the actors come from or how much they get paid. We in Knoxville tend to forget that we don't always have to go to other cities to experience great art that would be great art any place in the world. We are often blessed with fantastic, genius and entertaining productions right in our own backyard, and that's exactly what we've gotten in A Midsummer Night's Dream.