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A Midsummer Night's Dream
By Peggy High '55
 On three chilly evenings in February, 20 Upper School drama students transported us to Athens and a fairy-haunted wood nearby in their presentation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, directed by Caroline Wood with a set design by Luc Hotaling.
It was a busy night in the forest. Diaphanous panels of drapery suggested trees paled by moonlight, and four sparring lovers needed to be reconciled by fairies assigned to that task. The actors conveyed the speed and grace of the fairy world, where Puck can “put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes,” as well as the anguish and exhaustion of the mortal one, where Lysander, Helena, Hermia, and Demetrius, in spite of their agitated hearts, fall asleep on the forest floor.
The actors did justice, too, to the comical play within the play, Pyramus and Thisby. A flower-bedecked Thisby managed to look as absurd as the garlanded Titania, Queen of the Fairies, looked ethereal; the lion that dispatched Pyramus to the next world in the original tale was here reduced to stuttering and the character who played the talking wall was “the wittiest partition” ever.
The players clearly enjoyed themselves, regretting the end not only of the performances but also the camaraderie and the support they had received from one another. When asked about her favorite part of the play, the actor who played Titania mentioned the moment when she awakens, still under the influence of the magic herb, and falls in love with Bottom the weaver. For a younger student, who played the timid lion, the best parts were being in the play with her older sister, who played Oberon, King of the Fairies, and Ms. Wood’s adaptation of the play, especially the humorous scenes. Still another actor mentioned the “positive dynamic within the cast.”
Ms. Wood adapted the play to make it accessible to the students without detracting from its beautiful imagery. She wanted to convey to her cast the feeling of uneasiness and disorientation that underlies the watery sheen of the play and connects the disparate worlds of the fairies, lovers and craftsmen. It’s a feeling that Shakespeare himself expressed in the line, “So quick bright things come to confusion.”
“The lovers are disoriented and the forest itself is a place of endless possibility and danger,” Ms. Wood said. “Even the craftsmen, or mechanicals, such as Bottom the weaver and Peter Quince, experience some disorientation in taking the creative risk of performing their comedy before the Duke of Athens.”
In presenting the comedy of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Chapin actors took creative risks of their own and with notable success.
Click here to see a photo gallery from the play
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