With its brilliant production of the inventive and playful “Another Midsummer Night,” Goodman Theatre has itself a genuine, certified, absolute, justified musical hit. What it does not quite have is a show that lives up to all of its spectacular promise.
The promise is immense, and the premise is terrific.
Librettist/lyricist Arthur Perlman has imagined a marvelous variation on Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” in which many of the comedy’s characters and situations are transplanted to a contemporary setting.
Instead of the courtly lovers Lysander, Hermia, Demetrius and Helena in an enchanted wood outside Athens, we now have Larry, Heather, Daniel and Helen, a pair of young urban couples in a large park in a big American city. And, for laughs, instead of Bottom and the rude mechanicals, we now have Nicki Patos, a spacey performance artist, and her two assistants, preparing to present an avant-garde “Midsummer Matrix” (Parts 1-7).
Stirred awake by the electronic jolts that Nicki’s show generates, the verse-speaking fairies of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”-Puck, along with his cohorts Cobweb and Peaseblossom, and the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania-are aroused from a 400-year slumber and brought back to life, once more to ply their mischief on four young lovers.
But this time it’s mischief of a different, 20th Century kind. Television, slide projections and movies are all part of this midsummer magic, wittily conceived, impeccably computerized and perfectly coordinated in a marvel of modern stagecraft.
The Goodman stage, filled with moving sidewalks, gliding screens and exploding fireworks in Linda Buchanan’s scenic design, all but comes alive in the tricks and surprises that director Michael Maggio and his team-including Catherine Zuber (costumes), Robert Christen (lights), Richard Woodbury (sound), Chris Derfler (videography) and Bradley Vieth (musical direction)-have dreamed up.
Puck, Peaseblossom and Cobweb not only effortlessly fly above the stage, they turn somersaults and do backflips (to the beat of the music) in choreographer Danny Herman’s ingeniously airy dance routines. Nicki, the performance artist, not only uses TV in her act, she actually becomes (in one of the musical’s most hilarious sequences) a talking TV head. (Is this a sly send-up of director Peter Sellars’ use of TV monitors in last autumn’s controversial version of Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice” at Goodman?)
With all these highlights, however, there are a few flat stretches that modify the rapture.
In the first act, the love stories seem labored, and some of the humor, especially the jokes involving performance artists, is either lame or heavy-handed. Moreover, though composer Jeffrey Lunden and lyricist Perlman are expert in creating an energetic score that moves the action briskly, and though their musical and lyrical wit is formidable in the romantic “This Is Wrong” and the comic “Transform-ed,” they have not yet produced a song that audiences can take home with them.
A top-flight cast has been assembled for the merriment, beginning with Michael Rupert, Kathleen Rowe McAllen, Jim Walton and Jessica Molaskey, all first-rate professionals, as the lovers.
Mary Ernster (in beautiful voice) and Nick Wyman, both inexplicably dressed in 18th Century costumes, are Titania and Oberon; Hollis Resnik, in flaxen wig and her patented dumb-blond manner, is Nicki.
The evening’s most ingratiating performance, however, comes from Jim Corti, as Puck. Soaring above, alighting easily and dancing with quicksilver speed and grace, he is as fleet-footed a Puck as this comedy ever has seen. He’s also a funny fellow, a grand singer and just about perfect.
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“Another Midsummer Night” plays through Aug. 6 at Goodman Theatre, 200 S. Columbus Drive. Phone 312-443-3800.
