Review: Strong ensemble is key for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

Comedy is hard, as the saying goes, in part because achieving the togetherness of a genuine ensemble is tough.

The talkative isolation of the tragic protagonist suits the star system. “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” includes one of Shakespeare’s most uproarious demolitions of the starry pretensions of the tragedian. How fitting, then, that the Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles’ effervescent production features so fine – and so rare – an example of an ensemble working, playing, singing and creating havoc together.

Who knew Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 would lend itself to doo-wop? Three musical numbers, composed and arranged by musical chameleon Brian Joseph (who also plays Peter Quince), ease the audience into the play from its enchanting setting, the Japanese Garden of the VA center in West Los Angeles. These songs set the tone for the fast-moving evening of romantic befuddlement and topsy-turvydom to follow.

PHOTOS: Best in theater for 2012

Director Kenn Sabberton and the terrifically versatile and game cast grant the audience the great good favor of trusting it not to be stupid. They trust their audience to follow the language. They trust it to grasp the speedy doubling of roles. The gift of this trust is that the actors can get away with anything.

Michael Manuel (Bottom) can extend Pyramus’ death by miming hanging himself with his own intestines. Desean Kevin Terry (Flute) can answer this moment of universal laughter by turning on a dime: ripping off his wig, he delivers Thisbe’s lamentation as almost authentic mourning. Wyatt Fenner’s Puck elegantly stage-manages these and other transformations.

Playing both Theseus and Oberon, Paul Perri most effectively hits a note of melancholy that undercuts the fizz and mayhem. One recalls, especially in this setting, that Theseus is a veteran and Hippolyta a spoil of war.

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

The actors playing the quartet of lovers (Jason Frank, Jenna Johnson, Marcella Lentz-Pope and Terry) not only capture the confusion of erotic attachments gone haywire but also double as four of the tradesmen who perform the ridiculous play within the play.

The evening is full of such speedy transformations: everything, to paraphrase Puck, befalls preposterously. And this is, delightfully, goofily, and at times movingly, as it should be.

ALSO:

Shakespeare’s Globe wants to take ‘Hamlet’ to every country

‘Book of Mormon’ adding five more weeks to Pantages Theatre stop

O.C.’s top theater, South Coast Repertory, is nurturing O.C. stories

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare Center of Los Angeles, Japanese Garden, West Los Angeles VA, 11301 Wilshire Blvd. 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays. Ends July 28. $25; free for active military, veterans and their guests. Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes with intermission. (800) 838-3006 or www.shakespearecenter.org.

MORE

PHOTOS: Hollywood stars on stage

CHEAT SHEET: Spring Arts Preview

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures