Theatre in Review: A Midsummer Night's Dream (Classical Theatre of Harlem/Richard Rodgers Amphitheatre)The music emanating from Marcus Garvey Park these nights is sweet and hot, if not necessarily Shakespearean. The troublemaking Puck, parting a sumptuous blue show curtain and eyeballing the audience, steps out and launches into "Fascinatin' Rhythm," a number that acts as an overture of sorts: We will also get live or recorded versions of such American songbook delights as "You Stepped Out of a Dream" and "I'm Beginning to See the Light." As is often true of this fine company's productions, there is a pronounced dance element, here choreographed by Dell Howlett; in addition to a lively chorus Lindy-hopping around the stage, the subplot's "rude mechanicals" includes a couple of accomplished tappers. And why not? Set designers Christopher and Justin Swader have worked up a swanky nightclub set complete with a stage, a pair of balconies, and Tivoli bulbs lining every possible surface. Mika Eubanks has given certain characters some glorious plumage: Titania, Queen of the Fairies (Jesmille Darbouze, deploying considerable hauteur), enters looking like Bessie Smith in her fully feathered heyday. Some stage pictures, featuring her and her glitteringly dressed court, seem culled from an exotic Broadway revue of the 1920s or '30s. All of this is good fun, although, as concepts go, it doesn't make much sense. Many of the characters in A Midsummer Night's Dream are from Athenian society's upper echelon, bound by concepts of class and propriety; putting them in such a louche atmosphere doesn't add anything valuable. It soon becomes pretty obvious that the director, Carl Cofield, doesn't have much to say about the play. Indeed, his main interest lies in assembling a big entertainment package in which Shakespeare's play is an element, and maybe not necessarily the most important one. Just as the nightclub concept feels awkwardly imposed on the play, most of the laughs come from incidental bits of business, not the original text: Helena, the most frustrated of the play's mismatched lovers, drowning her sorrows by guzzling a bottle of booze; Oberon, king of the fairies, casually announcing, "I am invisible," with a bored wave of his hand before spying on the squabbling couples invading his forest; Hermia, on the lam from her vengeful father and lost in the woods with her lover Lysander, daintily donning a pink sleep mask before lying down for forty winks; Lysander and Demetrius, his rival in love, striking muscle-man poses to prove their collective virility; and Francis Flute, shrinking violet in a company of amateur theatricals, channeling Katharine Hepburn's clipped, patrician diction as the heroine of the play-within-the-play Pyramus and Thisbe. In the most audacious bit, Peter Quince, terrified to see his friend Bottom acquire a donkey's head via fairy sorcery, calls up (or, perhaps, reclaims) the spirit of Stepin Fetchit, shouting, "Feets, don't fail me now!" All of this is amusing enough. But, in outfitting this Midsummer Night's Dream with so many accouterments, something of the play's unruly nature has been lost. There's a darker, almost chaotic, sensibility, lurking behind the words, that isn't given room for expression. The cast goes through its paces, doing everything right without landing the huge laughs that can be produced by this tale of romance gone wildly away. It's not bad, but it feels a little dutiful, a tad by the numbers. Still, there are extremely likable people passing through: Allen Gilmore's Peter Quince is so well-spoken, one wants to see the actor tackle bigger classical roles; Mykal Kilgore's Puck is the very spirit of mischief, acting alternately as emcee, sprite, swing bandleader, and snooty French maître d'; Noah Michal gives the perpetually rejected Helena a screwball spin; and León Tak, making his professional debut, is the funniest of the mechanicals as Francis Flute. The comedian Russell Peters appears at selected performances as Bottom; I caught his understudy Jaylen D. Eashmond, who was solid if not a source of unbridled hilarity. Also making typically fine contributions are lighting designer Alan C. Edwards, projection designer Brittany Bland (conjuring up images of a moon seemingly dotted with fireflies), and composer/sound designer Frederick Kennedy, who, in addition to preserving the production's clarity, does some clever things with vocal distortion when Oberon and Titania are verbally sparring. CTH has given us many fine things and, given the weather right now, Cofield may be right in giving audiences something lightly ingratiating with which to while away an oh-so-hot summer night. (The audience at the performance I attended enjoyed itself royally.) But if this Dream never slips below a certain slick professionalism, it is less inspired than many of its predecessors, and its most entertaining elements often feel oddly ancillary to the main action. It feels all dressed up with no particular destination in mind. --David Barbour 
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