For nearly four decades, Tina Packer has been known for her triumphant summer Shakespeare productions. The vast majority of them have been at Shakespeare & Co. in Lenox, Mass., the theater she founded in 1978 as served as artistic director until 2009.
Now New Haven gets the Tina Packer treatment, with an elegant, enchanting, exhilarating and hilarious “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” playing outdoors in Edgerton Park (on the New Haven/Hamden line along Whitney Avenue) through Sept. 4.
Getting the renowned director is a coup for the Elm Shakespeare Company, which maintained high standards for its first two decades under the artistic directorship of James Andreassi. Andreassi left the company last year, though he may return to it someday as a director or actor. Elm Shakespeare’s new producing artistic director, Rebecca Goodheart, is a protege of Tina Packer and arranged for her mentor to helm the company’s first non-Andreassi season. Goodheart is also credited as this show’s associate director, working with the actors when Packer was not in town.
Packer’s known for crisp, clear presentations of Shakespeare plays that have a contemporary relevance and don’t dumb anything down.
The fantasy realm of “Midsummer” wouldn’t seem to allow for much in the way of modern-day social commentary, yet Packer does sneak a Donald Trump joke in there. Mostly, she uses Shakespeare’s romantic-comedy subplots (in which characters are bewitched into falling passionately involved with those they would otherwise snub) as an allegory for social and political power games of all kinds.
In Packer’s fairy world, Oberon (an imposing, bare-chested Frederick Secrease) constantly berates and dominates his rapscallion sidekick Puck (a mesmerizing Evan Gambardella, playing the role as if he were fronting a punk band). The romantic interludes have a sexist, even S&M, edge to them. There’s a lot of taking charge and ordering about. The production even begins with a full-scale military battle.
Yet there is beauty and wonderment and mirth in these weird woods as well.
The set is divided into two large platforms, with lots of lawn between them for the actors to gambol upon. Such a strict geographical division between “The Mortal World” and “The Fairy Kingdom,” as this production has it, has become commonplace when “Midsummer” is produced, especially outdoors. Since the “mortal” scenes are at the beginning and end of the play, it makes for a somewhat distracting viewing experience, since the Duke of Athens’ domicile stays right there the whole time. But to her credit, set designer Elizabeth Bolster has based her set on real trees, buildings and other structures found in Edgerton Park. It’s a familiar environment, enhanced with sparkling lighting effects (by Elm Shakespeare stalwart Jamie Burnett) and a gritty neo-classical sound design (Mike Skinner).
The cast involves many Elm Shakespeare Company veterans as well as some of Packer’s cronies from Shakespeare & Co. As it happens, it’s the Packer pack who get the more serious roles (he-man Secrease as Oberon, Kristin Wold as a no-nonsense Titania, Dave Demke as an oddly wooden and out-of-it Theseus) while some of Elm Shakespeare’s most well-rounded performers are doing non-stop comedy as The Mechanicals. As Bottom, Raphael Massie struts and spouts (in a little-boyish ranger outfit and quasi-Southern accent) so grandly that you have to laugh. His death scene, as Pyramus in the parodic play-within-a-play that ends the play, keeps getting bigger and sillier until you’re applauding the sheer insanity of it. Jeremy Funke earns his own laughs as Flute, squeaking up his voice to play Thisbe and embarking in a long dash about the park, pursued by Lion (Jordan Simpson).
It’s great to see an outdoor Shakespeare production that can deliver such over-the-top amusement yet doesn’t talk down to its audiences, confident that they’ll “get it” and will want to sit on the grass for more than two hours of intermission-less entertainment. Andreassi’s work for the Elm Shakespeare Company set the foundation for that assured, professional, thought-provoking and joke-honing attitude. Packer and Goodheart are swiftly building upon it.
It’s midsummer. Here’s where your dream is.
A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM is performed Tuesdays through Sundays at 8 p.m. through Sept. 4 in Edgerton Park, Cliff Street, New Haven. Admission is free; donations suggested. 203-392-8882, elmshakespeare.org.
