‘Dream’ Without Much Magic . . . And a Con Man Short on Charisma

It’s all Felix Mendelssohn’s fault. His “Incidental Music to A Midsummer Night’s Dream” so captures the magic spell of Shakespeare’s most popular comedy that I expect every production of the play to do the same. Only some succeed — such as Tina Packer’s near-legendary first production for Shakespeare & Company staged on the grounds and in the woods of The Mount in 1978. The company’s latest production, its eighth, doesn’t come close. Director Tony Simotes, who played Puck in the 1978 production, has chosen to set his version in a jazzy 1930s New Orleans. This gives his set, costume and lighting designers free rein to create the hot, mossy atmosphere of the Delta city and his music composer and director leeway to open the show with an acoustic blues number performed by actors in the production. (Turns out our Hippolyta/Titania plays the accordion.) But Simotes’s concept brings nothing new to the play. It is still about love and its foibles; about gaining wisdom and maturity. It is still about the duke of Athens and his wife, two pairs of would-be lovers, a rustic troupe of actors and the king and queen of the fairies and their subjects. Shakespeare’s beloved low comedy for the troupe, higher for the lovers, alternates with serious speeches — often tedious serious speeches — that in a theater famous for the “Packer cut” seem in tact and too long. Simotes imposes his concept on the southern accent his actors try to adopt. Most must have given up in rehearsal and settled for unaccented diction, since only two even try — Annette Miller (Egeus), whose drawl is so thick she might as well be playing Tennessee Williams, and Jonathan Epstein (Peter Quince), who settles on a lazy, sort-of Cajun drawl. His oddest notion is to turn Puck, the fairy King Oberon’s servant, into an earthbound character costumed so oddly he looks like a fur trapper, not a fleet-of-wing fairy. If you are patient, however, the production finally comes alive some two hours after it started. The wildly funny, mad mix-up among the young lovers produced by Puck’s error bursts across the stage and into the audience as Lysander (the always wonderful David Joseph), Hermia (Kelly Galvin), Helena (Cloteal L. Horne) and Demetrius (an athletic Colby Lewis) rush about, lost in the Athenian forest — sorry, that famous New Orleans forest — colliding in precise gymnastic moves. When Lysander and Demetrius square off, they hurl themselves about so violently that they end up in their underwear. This is Simotes at his best, choreographing electric action to the split-second. Rocco Sisto, a longtime company regular and Caliban to Olympia Dukakis’s Prospero in “The Tempest” in 2012, is fine as Theseus/Oberon and Merritt Janson good as Hippolyta/Titania, though there is little chemistry between them as either couple. Among the rustics, Johnny Lee Davenport, Bottom/Pyramus, is larger than life; and his braying ass, with whom Titania, under Puck’s misplaced spell, falls in love is charming. Malcolm brings the lightest touch of the evening to his ever-so-fey Flute. ­­­— Leon Graham “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” runs at Shakespeare & Company through Aug. 30. For schedule, call 413-637-3353 or go to www.shakespeare.org. In “The Rainmaker,” Lizzie Curry lives with her widowed father and her two brothers on the family ranch in a Depression-era Western town. All anyone in the family seems to want is for Lizzie to get married. But, as she would be the first to tell you, she’s a plain girl who has no idea how to act to attract a man. Should she accept herself for who she is and slide gracefully into spinsterhood? Or should she pretend to be someone she isn’t, acting flirty and coquettish like the girls that men all flock to? Or is there a third option? Newcomer Bill Starbuck thinks there is. He tries to convince Lizzie to be true to herself but to believe she is beautiful. If she believes it, then others will, too. Of course, Starbuck (née Smith) is quite comfortable convincing people to believe something that isn’t so. He’s a con man. He came onto the scene in order to take $100 from the family on the false promise that he will end the drought that is killing all the livestock.One brother believes Starbuck can do what he says, while the other realizes he’s a fraud and wants nothing to do with him. The father also recognizes the con, but pays the $100 because sometimes cons actually work. This production of “The Rainmaker” at The Sherman Playhouse is good but a tad uneven. It is Martin D. Rosato’s first directorial effort, and it shows. Stacy-Lee Frome is fine as Lizzie, showing us the young woman’s shame, despair, passion, and desire. The key to a successful con man is that people believe whatever he says. But Alexis M. Vournazos as Starbuck lacks the necessary smoothness and charisma to pull it off. The two standouts in the cast turn out to be near opposites. Jeff Rossman gives a wonderfully understated, naturalistic, sometimes droll performance as the father, H.R. Curry, a world-weary man with few illusions left. On the other hand, Thomas Ovitt’s Jimmy, the younger brother, is a charming high-energy naïf filled with enthusiasm and hope. He’s also pretty darned cute. As befits a play written in the 1950s and set in the ’30s, each male character feels entitled to push Lizzie toward the life he thinks is best for her. Lizzie, of course,must make her own decision. — Bruce T. Paddock “The Rainmaker” runs at the Sherman Playhouse in Sherman, CT, through Aug. 10. For tickets, call 860-354-3622; for information, go to information@theshermanplayhouse.org