Summary 
Spectacular modernization to a contemporary Latin American capital city and the Amazon rain forest. Jungle-like costumes and lightning-quick movement, including bungee jumps and trapeze leaps, combine with beautiful dance choreography and a pulsating musical score. Attractive lead performances double as both fairy and human king-and-queen, and with ample physical humor, this is superbly conceived and executed entertainment.
Design
Directed by Leon Rubin. Designed by John Pennoyer. Lights by Michael Whitfield. Sound by Jim Neil. Compositions by Bruce Gaston. Choreography by Donna Feore.
Cast
Jonathan Goad (Theseus/Oberon), Dana Green (Hippolyta/Titania), Brad Rudy (Egeus), Nazneen Contractor (Hermia), Jeffrey Wetsch (Lysander), Haysam Kadri (Demetrius), Michelle Giroux (Helena), Thom Marriott (Bottom), Nicolas Van Burek (Puck).
Analysis
Leon Rubin ingeniously relocates A Midsummer Night's Dream from Greece to an unspecified capital city in Latin America, apparently ruled by a paramilitary regime. Police guards in berets and camouflage uniforms carry automatic rifles to protect Theseus and Hippolyta, and their references to Athens are subtly modified to just "the city." The two leaders - played by a pair of young Festival stars: a swarthy and handsome Jonathan Goad, and an elegantly beautiful Dana Green - begin the production with a sexy tango dance, strutting cheek to cheek and twirling with a wonderful kind of antagonistic but sexually charged tension. Their passion lingers, but when Goad's Theseus sides with the decidedly unromantic Egeus against the young and true love of Hermia and Lysander, Green's Hippolyta flashes her eyes and storms from the stage.
Goad and Green double as Oberon and Titania in the subsequent scene, only now deep within the Amazonian rainforest, and the husband-and-wife arguments comically continue, with the couple hissing and snarling at one another with passion. But Goad and Green are transformed, their costumes a colorful delight: Goad, tattooed like a jungle cat, struts bare-chested and imposing in a wispy brownish-red robe, with a long-haired wig, a black beard, and a horned head dress; Green, statuesque and gorgeous, wears a gauze-like purple outer garment, bare-legged and with a bare-midriff, her hair up and concealed within a feathered violet cap. Goad's Oberon and Green's Titania are beautiful to look at and a joy to behold in performance, she beginning the scene in the balcony, deep within a jungle filled with insect hums and bird calls, and he below, poised on a hand-rail downstage.
The abundant fairies within the jungle rainforest sprint and leap with tremendous energy, climbing trees and scampering among the branches or squatting like lithe animals in the onstage foliage. They wear green-streaked mini-costumes of a flesh-toned color that are form-fitting and skin-tight, so the pixies appear to be naked when not actually revealing a good deal of actual flesh. Puck - gleeful and muscular, nearly nude in just earth-tone knickers - wears slashes of green tattoos and straw-like wristbands, and plays like a miniature Oberon, acrobatic and physically strong, agile like a dancer in his fluid motions. He utilizes the three-level set, racing and leaping at audience level below the stage, swinging from onstage jungle-gym apparatus and iron vines, or nimbly climbing up into the balcony. Accompanied by a pulsating Latin American musical score, the choreography dazzles, especially during a ballet-like but high-speed twirling dance sequence, darkly lit in a frenzy of motion.
Rubin conceives of the four young lovers as a North American popular-music diva and her entourage. Hermia is portrayed as a well-toned naughty school girl - a la early Britney Spears - in her tempestuous teenage manner and sexy black stockings, frilly bustier, white dress shirt, and over-the-elbow formal white gloves. She poses and flirts, with Helena her groupie and want-to-be friend (when not making catty remarks), and Lysander her way-cool hip-hop boy-toy boyfriend, wearing jewel-studded sneakers and a white track suit with black racing stripe. Helena and Demetrius seem made for each other, she in her drab school uniform with pony-tail, wire-rimmed glasses, a nerdy red neck-tie, and overloaded backpack, and he wearing a stiffly-pressed, preppy suit before changing into Eddie Bauer-style camping gear for the romantic race into the forest. The lovers almost immediately begin to deconstruct once distanced from the city and lost within the enchantment of the jungle, their clothes ripped or removed, their bodies streaked with body-paint mud like the fairy tattoos.
Rubin intertwines an already superb production with the third story thread, and his rude mechanicals do not disappoint. The six would-be stage performers are much less tradesmen than beer-chugging tourists or beach-bum locals, staggering to their much-needed rehearsal with hangover-like sullenness, lunch-pails in hand. Quince, the hyper-serious director, wears a tacky white suit, frequently - and annoyingly - blows a shrill whistle, checks his stopwatch, and refers to an almanac in his briefcase that turns out to just be a pornographic calendar. Their prize ham Nick Bottom provides the funniest moments, wisely held in check by Rubin, executing outlandish actor's warm-up exercises, waking the love-in-idleness smitten Titania by crudely crooning a rap song, or playing air-drums and wicked air-guitar solos.
After Puck and the fairies tease the four lovers and pull at their hair, the girls pointedly begin to resemble one other, Hermia losing her stylized chic with her hair down and tangled, and Helena - in a reprise of the role played on the same stage by Michelle Giroux in 1999 - becoming earthier, her tie and glasses lost, her hair loose, the backpack discarded. Giroux's Helena provides the jungle-love scenes with their funniest moment when she unwittingly stomps completely across the body of the sleeping Lysander in 2.2. The boys lose their urban artifice as well, and interestingly, when they return to the city for the joyous wedding ceremonies, it is Demetrius who appears trendy and stylish and sophisticated - with a white sport coat over an open lavender dress shirt - and the two ladies dance in identical flowered dresses.
Rubin's invention to afford Goad's Oberon and Green's Titania the opportunity to change from their elaborate fairy costumes into their 4.1 Theseus and Hippolyta hunting outfits is an ingenious success. The fairies dance and leap with exuberance at the healed rift between the Fairy Queen and King and in advance of the celebration in the city, but the dance suddenly adds jaw-dropping circus tricks. The fairies soar from the fly on bungee cords and spring quickly back up again, using trapeze bars and platforms as they seem to streak through the air like twirling birds in flight. The full use of the great height of the Festival Theatre is a breathtaking achievement that recalls the Cirque de Soleil, and indeed, Rubin utilized circus instructor Anais Guimond to train his actors and dancers.
Rubin concludes this dazzling production with the outrageous performance of Pyramus and Thisby, and while the scene definitely amuses, the slapstick antics nonetheless feel inane - almost like a comic afterthought - especially following hard upon the spectacle of the rhythmic score, the wonderful costumes, the aerial choreography, and the lavish dance sequence. The would-be actors shout in panic for their lines and make a mess of their play, with Quince posing for a photograph with the lovely Hippolyta at the end, and Demetrius turning to give a disapproving glare into the audience as a cell phone continues to ring loudly, then realizing the phone is his own. With the mechanicals' closing Bergomask, Rubin concludes this often spectacular A Midsummer Night's Dream with yet another wonderful tango sequence.