A Midsummer Night’s Dream – RSC

The Royal Shakespeare Company is proud to bring William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream to the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
The action playfully opens on an austere landscape whose royal inhabitants dress in downtown black and exhibit an accompanying hauteur. When the transformation from Athenian court to enchanted woodlands occurs, signified by vivid plastic flowers erupting through the floorboards, the real magic begins. Lusty Titania, queen of the fairies, doesn’t know the meaning of “demure.” When she sheds her shroudlike coat she reveals not only a lushly flowing gown but, thanks to the alchemical connivings of a jealous Oberon, a startlingly ravenous appetite for the hapless Bottom, whose morphing from carpenter into ass is sheer aphrodesia for the spellbound sovereign. The leprechaun-like Puck fulfills his role as a half-witted but basically harmless mischiefmaker whose herbal ministrations cause a series of hopelessly ridiculous amorous mix-ups.
Eventually, of course, “all is mended.” Lovers reunite, Titania and Oberon reconcile, and the rest of the forest folk, including an apologetic Puck, resume the happy business of being fairies.