Jameela McNeil (centre) in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set buy Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
“Welcome mortals!” declares the wandering “knavish sprite” in the glittering red jumpsuit (Luc Tellier as Puck) who bounds aerobically through the crowd on fabulous Fluevog platforms, with an orange mullet that makes other mullets look apologetic. “It’s almost fairy time.”
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In the big festive ensemble number that opens the Citadel’s new adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, you get to see the chaos potential of love, set forth onstage in all its exuberant danceable complications (kudos to choreographer Gianna Vacirca). And you’ll hear it too, courtesy of Shakespeare’s first (and possibly only) collaboration with Supertramp: “Give a little bit, of your love to me….” By intermission, with romantic hypertension at peak levels and everyone with the wrong someone, there’s another production number, Ballroom Blitz.
As the delighted Friday night crowd confirmed by their shared laughter, in quantity, there’s a kind of hilarity, and nutty apt ingenuity, about pairing the rom-com hit of the 1590s, to a 25-song jukebox of ‘70s radio hits that are virtually part of mortal DNA by now. This is the cross-century match-making inspiration of Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran, along with Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan artistic director Kayvon Khoshkam, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Luc Tellier (centre) as Puck, Citadel Theatre. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.
Is this Dream a brooding existential meditation? A dark excursion into the labyrinthine unconscious? An explosion of the poetic impulse? Lord, no. “The spirit of mirth” prevails all night long in this pairing of Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedy and ‘70s hits that you know from their first chords. This new collaboration is reflected on Hanne Loosen’s set, lighted by Jareth Li: the classic symmetry of double staircase design, but with sparkles, metal-work trellises, shimmering trees, and a psychedelic forest floor.
Who knew that an interest in the intricacies of love — ecstasy, near-misses, waywardness, romantic miscues, rejections, ambivalence, confusion —would be something the Bard and the Everly Brothers have in common? “When will I be loved?” sings the girl who’s furiously pursuing a guy who is furiously pursuing someone else, in an enchanted wood with a fairy organizer. True, “it happens every time” isn’t exactly poetry, but it cuts to the chase.
Luc Tellier and Charlie Gallant in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.
Ah yes, the chase. There are no fewer than four storylines interwoven into A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And as the co-creators of the musical have discovered, in lopping big chunks off the play, the ‘70s cough up songs that surprise you by capturing moments or tangents in all four. Occasionally bits and pieces of the text are actually made into extra lyrics for those songs by orchestrator/ arranger Ben Elliott.
There’s a quartet of lovers, on the lam from from authority and, as it will transpire, each other. There’s the court, where the Duke (Charlie Gallant) is preparing to wed his fiancée Hippolyta (Jameela O’Neil). In fairyland, the fairy king Oberon and his consort Titania (Gallant and O’Neil) are at loggerheads, for reasons that have been cut from the musical. And a garage band of “hempen homespuns” — rustic artisans and amateur thespians led by carpenter-turned-director Peter Quince (Ruth Alexander), and taken over by a bossy stagestruck weaver, Bottom (in John Ullyatt’s hilarious performance) — are rehearsing a show to perform at court.
The go-between, MC, and fairy go-fer/ fixer is the lithe Ziggy Stardust figure of Puck, whose amusement as an agent of mischief and connoisseur of chaos has a soupçon of malice, all captured to a T by Tellier. Our entertainment (and his own) is his not-so-secret agenda.
And this four-part weave — lovers, courtiers, fairies, “rude mechanicals” — comes with costumes to match, a treat for the eyes from designer Deanna Finnman. The Athenians are a riot of bell-bottoms, fringes, polyester shirts. The amusingly melancholy, sad-eyed Demetrius (Chirag Naik) chases his beloved through the woods wearing a full banana-coloured suit with big lapels.
The fairies, led by Titania and Oberon, have a sexy Vegas showbiz razzle-dazzle about them. And the endearing, born-again theatre makers (led by Bottom in droopy moustache and a greaser ‘do), whose day jobs are tinker, tailor, bellows-mender, joiner, are denim flare people. They’re an excellent band, actually. And their earnest rehearsals have sport at the expense of theatre rituals — including their attention to trigger warnings, director’s notes from Ruth Alexander’s Peter Quince, and Bottom’s magnanimous offer to play all the parts, not just Pyramus. Their triumphant emergence from their woodland “garage” as full-fledged entertainers, in purple satin bellbottoms, is one of the comic highlights of the evening.
There’s double-sided comedy in attaching the hot-house intensity of love in Shakespeare’s play to the power ballads of the 70s, bleached into submission by decades of covers. And in Cloran’s production, the detailed, and heightened, comic performances of the lovers as they deliver the songs capitalize on the fun of that. It’s the kind of fun that happens when real actors listen to the lyrics and take those very familiar songs — “that’s the way I like it, uh-huh” — head-on, dramatically.
Chirag Naik and Christina Nguyen in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price
Christina Nguyen as the little spitfire Helena digs into Blondie’s One Way Or Another like she’s going to ignite. Alexandra Dawkins’ Hermia and Rochelle Laplante’s ebullient Lysander make a big-M dramatic Moment from their duet For Once In My Life.
As Oberon, king of the fairies, Gallant is very funny: a preening dope of a big-hair rock star, bare-chested save for a major pendant. His delivery of It’s More than A Feeling will make you laugh out loud. When crossed, he gets sulky, in a diva sort of way. McNeil’s Titania, stunning in a sequinned gown, is not impressed, witness her powerhouse rendition of I Will Survive, with back-up fairies.
McNeil is the strongest singer of the company, an r&b and soul natural. And when, as an instrument of Oberon’s revenge, she falls in love with Bottom who’s magically wearing an ass’s head thanks to Puck, Let’s Get It On is single-minded and full-throttle. Vacirca’s choreography of the scene, which involves Bottom’s evolution from incredulity through skepticism to participation, is a riot in itself.
John Ullyatt as Bottom, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.
In the last four centuries, it’s the “rude mechanicals,” the theatre wannabes, who have a way of stealing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And it’s true here, too. Their rehearsals, and their climactic production on the night, bring down the house. Francis Flute the bellows mender played with amusing wide-eyed innocence by Oscar Derkx, is initially dismayed to discover he’s been assigned the woman’s part, Thisbe. But he gamely rises to the occasion — on rollerskates he can’t control. And in Ullyatt’s performance, Bottom, rising to the histrionic potential of his new career in the starring role of Pyramus, delivers an unforgettably funny death scene — to the BeeGee’s Stayin’ Alive. You’ll leave the theatre still laughing; I did.
As Theseus and and his new wife say of the entertainment choices for their wedding night, “how shall we beguile the lazy time, if not with some delight?” Exactly. In times like these, when delight is at a premium, a production that boldly gives up a lot of the lyrical magic and poetry of a dreamy play in order to give new, and comic, juice to the lyrics of a 70s anthem like Kool and the Gang’s Celebration, is fun that’ll take you by surprise. Talk about “a most rare vision.” Seek it out, my friends. “Let’s have a great time, come on.”
Have you seen the preview with Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran and Luc Tellier?
REVIEW
A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical
Theatre: Citadel Theatre
Adapted by: Daryl Cloran and Kayvon Khoshkam
Directed by: Daryl Cloran
Starring: Ruth Alexander, Billy Brown, Alexandra Dawkins, Oscar Derkx, Taylor Fawcett, Charlie Gallant, Kristel Harder, Rochelle Laplante, Jameela McNeil, Chirag Naik, Christina Nguyen, Biboye Onanuga, Bernardo Pacheko, Dean Stockdale, Luc Tellier, John Ullyatt
Running: through March 23
Tickets: citadeltheatre.com. 780 425-1820
