Review: "Bottom’s Dream"

A delightful but underdeveloped adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream turns Shakespeare upside down and interactive

Bottom’s Dream: A Midsummer Actor’s Nightmare is more of a director’s nightmare. How is she supposed to produce a play to perform at the royal wedding, if her principal actor shows more enthusiasm than talent and gets himself transformed into an ass? In this original adaptation of Shakespeare’s classical comedy, the focus is mainly on the subplot of the amateur theatre company rehearsing in the woods. In the production by Seven League Boots, the so-called “company” consists of two people, the shy director Quince (Jenna Beressi) and the overly confident Nick Bottom (Eric Austin) cast as ‘Pyramus.’ Every other part in Quince’s production is up for grabs—which is where the audience comes in.

Aston Hollins McClanahan in Bottom's Dream. Photo by Sam Blinn

The casting (really a search for volunteers) comes much later in the show since Nick Bottom is eager to snatch every part for himself. Austin portrays him in a nonchalant, relaxed manner perfectly contrasting Beressi’s tightly-wound nervousness. The audience assembles around those two in a spacious Plaxall Gallery, the home base of Long Island City Artists in Queens. The agenda is clear and Quince proceeds with the description of the roles. But we are out of luck in moving on with the rehearsal as we keep being interrupted by Athenian youth going through their own soap opera. First, Helena (Kyra Jackson, who also briefly doubles as Titania) clutches herself to Demetrious (Jonathan Ryan) confessing her devotion. Then Hermia (Libby Anderson) and Lysander (Dontonio Demarco) argue if they should sleep next to each other.

The sights and comments of the unseen and unheard Rude Mechanicals accompany the love scenes. The actors neglect the fact that the audience is all around them during these two scenes. After participating as characters in the play, we are suddenly diminished to the role of a traditional theatre audience. It is a strange directorial choice made by Andy Schneeflock, especially considering that later on he corrects himself in this regard.    

Looking for a quiet place to rehearse, Quince leads the audience through multiple rooms of the gallery complex. Experiencing a beloved Shakespeare comedy as promenade is a revelation in Bottom’s Dream, it appears to be a perfect format for a play where characters wander in the woods, chasing each other.   But don’t worry about standing for a prolonged period of time, the promenade-style show is only an hour long, and the audience members are seated for portions of it. During the most juicy argument between the four Athenian lovers (when both men are drawn to Helena under the spell of the purple love flower), we are prompted to take seats in a circle and masquerade as trees by holding up two large, tropical leaves. The comedic and physical squabble between friends and lovers is an amusing part of the show, but it diverted the attention from the amateur theatre company for too long. And since this subplot of the original bard’s play is the main theme in Bottom’s Dream, the scene between four Athenians feels disproportionately long.

Some context around the original Midsummer Night’s Dream is necessary but Jenny Brown and Leigh Anne Poulos, the authors of the adaptation, have successfully edited out and consolidated a lot of the material. There are no fairies, as only the queen Titania appears briefly on the balcony. The costume design follows a simple but smart principle: the color-coded modern attire of the young lovers makes it easier to follow who loves whom at which point in the play. Helena and those who favor her wear a blue shirt while “Team Hermia” wears red.

A lot of the background information on the human and fairy shenanigans is given by Puck (Aston Hollins McClanahan). This rosy-cheeked jester plays an electric guitar and wears a leather jacket as he tells us about his pranks on mortals; Puck uses modern playful slang, miles away from the original text. Bottom and Quince only speak “Shakespearean” dialogue when reciting lines from Pyramus and Thisbe and express themselves in everyday English otherwise. And only the Athenian lovers largely stick to the canon. The mixture of the styles seems effortless, perhaps, because we are surrounded by artistic expressions varying in mediums and techniques. I wish the play addressed the surroundings more explicitly. Otherwise, why does the art gallery of all places become the woods outside Athens?

Putting the audience members in the shoes of Rude Mechanicals is an interesting twist, and with Shakespeare adaptations we always look for something new. However the playwrights could exploit their interpretation even further, like Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead does, for example (in this play, which many readers may know from the 1990 film adaptation, Hamlet is told from the point of view of two minor characters). The scenes between young lovers could be more concise. Despite happening amidst the audience, they are treated as traditional theatre even though  some of us came here as immersive theatre lovers wanting to “play.” The interactions with Puck, which are not in Midsummer Night's Dream, are a great narrative device, which expands the world of the story.  

All participation in the piece is voluntary. Thisbe gets cast in the middle of the show from the audience, as are The Wall, The Moon, and The Thorn Bush for the final performance. All they need to do is repeat lines after Quince says them and try not to laugh too hard while on stage. The rest of us are asked to pose for a group selfie, impersonate a forest of trees, and play kazoos—that’s it. There is a bit of walking and standing but there is a bench in nearly every gallery on which a few people can seat.

Bottom’s Dream has a lot of great ideas and a wonderful cast to work with, but as my colleague Ed Mylechreest noted, the production plays it too safe and I couldn’t agree more. I came out of the gallery filled with the pleasant warmth after a delightful performance. But a hint of disappointment bittered the aftertaste, as it often happens, when I realized that the show doesn’t quite live up to its fullest potential.

(This review was published on noproscenium.com)