It would be pretty astounding at this point in time to dredge up new insights into Shakespeare's oft-produced A Midsummer Night's Dream, but the two-year-old Flux Theatre Ensemble certainly has tried. The show's program describes the effort. Before starting production, Flux presented a four-night reading series featuring 16 playwrights' takes on Midsummer's characters. Shakespeare's comedy is also the opening gambit in what the company calls a "season of transformation" consisting of plays "where life changes the body against the body's will." This puts an existential spin on a key element in Midsummer: the rambunctious Bottom's transformation to not only a donkey but also the love object of the fairy queen Titania. Director August Schulenburg further tells us that as the company worked on the play, it "streaked our eyes with love, and we are chasing it through the woods, but it will not stay for us."
I can't say that all this has resulted in any new revelations, but the exploration is apparent in a production of engaging lucidity and immediacy. In addition to his imaginative and intelligent staging within the usual budgetary confines of Off-Off-Broadway, Schulenburg has melded his 20 actors into an effective ensemble. If the poetry doesn't always sing, there's little doubt that the performers know what they're talking about and what's happening to them moment to moment -- not an easy feat with this fantasy's quickly shifting moods. Both the spookiness of a magical forest at night, where young love is thrown into turmoil, and the comedy of the clownish mechanicals as they attempt to become thespians are nicely realized, even with some unusual casting choices.
Bottom is played by Christina Shipp, who physically is little more than a slip of a girl, but she attacks the role with an uninhibited comic flair. Another notable characterization is Nitya Vidyasagar's petite and playfully malicious Puck, who, with her immense eyes and quirky movement, almost looks computer-generated and personifies the meeting of the real and the fantastic, the light and the dark, within Shakespeare's classic.
Presented by Flux Theatre Ensemble
at the West End Theater, 263 W. 86th St., NYC.
June 6-22. Tue.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.
(212) 352-3101 or (866) 811-4111 or www.theatermania.com.