“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was the first production staged by Oak Park Festival Theatre for its inaugural season. The company is returning to that perennial favorite to launch its 48th season July 13-Aug. 19 at Austin Gardens.
“I thought it was a nice callback to our inaugural season as this is my first season,” said new Artistic Director Peter G. Andersen, who is directing the production.
Performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, and 7 p.m. Sundays.
Andersen, who recently graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a degree in directing, noted that “audiences are slowly starting to trickle back into the theater… People are looking for comfort plays that they know.”
“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” fills that bill.
The director is particularly attracted to the love story in this play.
“Sometimes productions jump over that first scene,” he related. “But that first scene is really important. The lovers are in a pretty dire situation. Hermia’s life is on the line. They are fleeing the city of Athens to be who they want to be and love who they want to love.”
Andersen adds to the relevance of the play with creative casting.
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Molly Brennan plays the role of weaver Nick Bottom, who acquires a donkey head because of mischievous Puck.
“He has an obnoxious enthusiasm for himself and the theater, a great love for being onstage, and somewhat of a lack of sensitivity about how his enthusiasm affects those around him,” Brennan said of Bottom.
Brennan observed that it’s a great role for her because, “I’m a clown. I’m in the Lucille Ball variety of comedic actors. I’m a physical actor.” She laughingly added, “I’m afraid that I have an obnoxious enthusiasm for theater.”
Bottom undergoes a big change because of his experiences in the fairy world. Showing his transformation is the biggest challenge of the role, Brennan said.
Brennan, who has been acting in Chicago for 30 years, is enthusiastic about being in a show at the Oak Park Festival Theatre for the first time. She offered high praise for Andersen. “He’s a wonderful combination of an artistic genius with very sophisticated theatrical ethos and a 15-year-old theater kid. He treats everyone with the knowledge that everyone’s contribution is important,” she said.
Julio Cesar Gutierrez, who plays Demetrius, praised “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” saying, “I think it’s one of the most captivating plays that Shakespeare wrote.”
He said that his character is trying to abide by the rules of society. It gets complicated for him because Demetrius is engaged to Hermia who loves Lysander. Helena loves Demetrius but he initially rejects her.
“I think the way that Peter (director Anderson) has decided to cast this show tells a very different story about what is going on in the play,” Gutierrez said. “Helena being played by a man gets into Demetrius feeling constrained by what society sees as correct. It tells a very different story. It’s a little bit more relevant.”
Director Andersen praised the play-within-a-play that ends the show. In it, two lovers die. “Shakespeare closes the play with that story as sort of a warning that this could have happened to our lovers Hermia and Lysander,” Andersen related. “He’s sort of reminding us of what theater can do. It can help us digest the world around us.”
‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
When: July 13-Aug. 19
Where: Oak Park Festival Theatre at Austin Gardens, 167 Forest Ave., Oak Park
Tickets: $38; $20 for previews July 13-14; free to ages 12 and under; pay what you can Thursdays
Information: 708-300-9396; oakparkfestival.com
Myrna Petlicki is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.