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Happy After-Birthday Sweetie
Took gil_liant out to see 'A Midsummer's Night's Dream' for his birthday on Saturday. Thankfully, the theatre's air-conditioning was adequate. When I'd heard Arclight was planning to do 'MND' with a Mexican setting, I was pretty dubious, but the production was the -best- I've ever seen.
[Except for Puck, I tend to be rather apathetic about the faeries - and actively dislike Oberon, but WOW! the edge they gained from being ouzel was fantastic - and I loved the interpretation of Oberon.]
[Except for Puck, I tend to be rather apathetic about the faeries - and actively dislike Oberon, but WOW! the edge they gained from being ouzel was fantastic - and I loved the interpretation of Oberon.]
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We enjoyed it as well, although... I was snickering a little at Oberon's costume. A picture can probably say why better then words could:
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BTW, friended ya!
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I totally agree with the review of the actress playing 'Puck'. A nice mix of reckless play and malicious humor. Plus she added a lot of physical characterization to her performance -- as, to an extent, did all the oushkemal[?] (I.e., 'faeries'. Although I liked the costuming, I found the 'Mayan-ization' of the language to be generally distracting and irritating.)
As for Oberon, I agree the costuming, in itself, was bit silly. On the other hand, I thought it went a long way to explaining why he pouted and preened and generally 'ponced' his way around the stage for the first act. To be honest, I initially thought his was one of the weaker performances -- though he had one of the best voices in the cast -- just because he was (or seemed to be) emotionally 'all over the map', with no coherent thread to explain his wild gestures and contorted expressions.
However, in the second act, he settled down a bit and, I thought, gave a convincing and evocative performance as the character realizes the havoc his designs have wrought upon the innocent mortals caught up them. His was among the strongest performances during the second act, in my opinion.
In general, I enjoyed the show a lot. Some performances were better than others -- but then this is community theater. And I thought some of the performances were very well done, including specifically Puck, Helena and Bottom. Hermia, Lysander and Oberon all had their moments, and their good moments far outweighed their bad moments.
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