The Spotlight Theatre Company at Falls Church High School is currently presenting an impressively loyal production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night Dream” with students reciting what seems to be nearly every line of the play.
By this full airing of the comedy, the four plots of this intricate play are given full justice. There is the love narrative between Hermia, Helena, Lysander, and Demetrius, which results in a debacle through the inadvertent mischief of the prancing Puck, who casts a floral medicinal spell on the wrong lover’s eye—a demonstration of Shakespeare’s line from the play that “the course of true love never did run smooth.” The second plot takes us to the world of the fairies, involving a conflict between King Oberon and Queen Titania over the possession of the “changeling child.” Then there is Nick Bottom, the overly zealous actor in a group of rustic performers and the only mortal who breeches into the world of the supernatural, unwittingly becoming part of King Oberon’s scheme to distract Titania. There is a final plot which involves a play-within-a-play: a comic performance of the tragedy of “Pyramus and Thisbe” from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses.”
Director Beth De Marco, who incorporates a Shakespeare play into her “Theatre 1” curriculum every year, is to be highly praised for guiding student actors into the world of Shakespearean classics. “I think students can digest the language quite easily,” says director De Marco, as the student actors show a solid grasp of the Shakespearean language by bringing out the physical humor of the work to match the spoken lines. She also notes of student performers’ reactions to preparing for the play: “Students really related to ‘Midsummer’s’ themes of what happens when parents (and others) meddle in their relationships.”
Alejandro Espinoza Leiva, who plays the rustic “actor” Snout, feels like “speaking the original language deepens your character.” He also feels like Shakespeare is “easier to understand when it’s read or performed aloud.” Stage manager Ali Lieberman comments that “Shakespeare’s language gets the actors more immersed in the story, as opposed to our modern-day language that loses something in the translation.”
Though the production is loyal to the original work, the production nonetheless adds its own interpretation to one scene in particular: “We staged a scene at the beginning of the play to show Oberon’s jealousy of Titania’s attention to the changeling child. We also embraced the challenge of the text when Theseus says to Hippolyta ‘I won thee doing thee injuries’ by staging a battle scene where the Amazons take over Theseus’ army and the two fall in love while admiring each other’s skill.” The chaos between the lovers was enacted excellently by Penny Mollen (who plays Hermia), Max Purtill (who plays Lysander), Lam Vu (who plays Demetrius), and Sasha Wendell (who plays Helena). Actress Dara Kearney as Titania, Queen of the Fairies, brings her lines to life nicely, and Ellie Whitfield is lively and entertaining as the mischievous Puck.
The beautiful sets create the idyllic midsummer atmosphere with a rotating set of garden arches embellished with floral green nature, a large mushroom, and the “beams of the watery moon” displayed in the background. Speaking of water, parent volunteer Carrie Wendell notes an especially fun part of the production: “The students have constructed an actual (filled) pond for the stage for Helena to be pushed into!”
Costumes are outstanding period costumes, mostly suggesting Elizabethan fashion. Roller-skating fairies and winged butterflies imbued the production with both modern and classical/romantic elements.
“Perchance you wonder at this show,” to quote Shakespeare, the play is being performed on May 2 at 7:00 p.m., May 4 at 2:00 p.m. & 7:00 p.m., and May 5 at 3:00 p.m. — sure entertainment for those looking for a beginning to a “glimmering light” summer atmosphere with the added realm of “elf and fairy sprite.” For further information, please visit: Spotlight Theatre Company (fchsdrama.org)
