Fairy Queen Titania strokes Nick Bottom’s long ears.
The fairy queen is impelled by a magic spell cast by her rival Oberon to love the first being she sees upon awakening. So Titania has fallen for the ludicrous combination of donkey and man – as she has for more than 400 years, to the universal delight of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” audiences.
Titania (Heather Wolf-Smeeth) pays homage while Bottom (Grant Twitchell) preens. Director Bob McAllister laughs as if seeing the bit for the first time, although the Shakespeare play has been in rehearsal for weeks.
The actors and techies scattered throughout the darkened LGI room laugh, too – appreciation that bodes well for the production’s success.
Bottom turns the archaic English “nay” into a braying, donkeyesque “neigh,” provoking still more guffaws.
“Perfect, perfect,” McAllister says hoarsely.
The strain of the unrelenting rehearsal schedule is beginning to tell. McAllister is tired; so are the cast and crew.
“I’ve been involved with every play since my freshman year,” said BHS junior Haley Isaf, a student co-director with Yoko McCann, “and this one was a lot harder for us to do.”
Because of the unfamiliarity of the Shakespearean language, Isaf says, the actors had to learn to express meaning through body language and facial expression.
“They had to really paint a picture,” Isaf said.
At the start of the rehearsals, Isaf and McCann took painstaking notes as McAllister blocked each scene with the actors. The student directors compiled their notes into a master script.
“After rehearsals, Yoko and I would talk with some of the newer actors.” Isaf said. “We made sure they knew what every single word meant.”
The plot is a tangle of fairy quarrels and human folly set in the deep midnight woods of Shakespeare’s imagination.
McAllister’s young actors move deftly from fairy choreography to the buffoonery of “Pyramus and Thisbee,” the play-within-a-play performed by Nick Bottom’s outlandish troupe of troubadors: Peter Quince (Braden Duncan); Robin Starveling (Andy Kelly), Snug the Joiner (Matt Miller) and Tom Snout the Tinker (Joel Messett).
Audiences may notice that the inset farce is remarkably reminiscent of another of Shakespeare’s plays, “Romeo and Juliet” – a chance for the Bard to poke fun at himself.
The high school players have mastered lines well enough to be convincing; they enunciate every word, not rattling off the unfamiliar language in staccato rapid-fire, or standing woodenly while Making a Speech.
The effect is the result of a lot of hard work on the part of the actors, directors and crew who have rehearsed four evenings a week for six weeks.
“I haven’t done too much homework,” Isaf admits.
Their complete assimilation of the language seems to free these actors to really have fun with the play.
Their exuberance makes the familiar lines come to life.
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Bainbridge High School theater presents William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” directed by Bob McAllister 7:30 p.m. Nov. 2, 3, 9, 10, 16 and 17. Tickets are $9/adults and $8/seniors and students. For more information call 780-1653.)
