'Midsummer Night' on a Midsummer Night

The weekend of June 23rd, Binghamton playgoers will have the opportunity to experience William Shakespeare’s enduring comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the environment that its title suggests - under the stars of a summer evening outdoors. Endicott’s Cider Mill Playhouse will present the production free to the public to inaugurate a tradition of “Shakespeare on the River” and as part of the City of Binghamton’s new summer-long arts festival.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream was first published in 1600 with an indication that it had already been “sundry times publicly acted” before then. The majority of these performances would almost have certainly been outdoors in the open air, with Shakespeare’s own iconic open-air theater, The Globe, having opened in London only the year before. The play is a particularly appropriate one to inaugurate a series of outdoor Shakespeare performances, as it deals with mythical creatures of nature, and set is both in the woods and in Fairyland.

The subject matter is perhaps the most fanciful of all of Shakespeare’s plays, as it presents several strands that bring humanity into contact with the transformative and magical power of nature. The production is directed by Tim Mollen, a regular figure in the Broome County arts scene and no stranger to Shakespeare. “I, like most people, had read some of the play in class in high school,” Mollen recalls, “but it was the first one I was ever in. At SUNY Oswego my freshman year I played Nick Bottom and I’ve been in love with Shakespeare ever since.”

Bottom, who in this production will be portrayed by Conor Haynes, is a weaver and pompous over-the-top amateur ham actor whose theatre troupe (known as “the mechanicals”) is preparing to perform at the wedding of Duke Theseus of Athens and the Amazonian Queen Hippolyta. However, he finds himself enchanted by the mischievous spirit Puck, and his head - in a broad pun on his name - is turned into that of an ass.

Puck, also known as Robin Goodfellow, was an ancient figure of English folklore, interpreted by Shakespeare as a “shrewd and knavish sprite,” a “merry wanderer of the night,” and a servant of the Fairy King Oberon, whose estranged wife Titania has resolved to attend Theseus and Hippolyta's wedding. For Mollen, the combination of Shakespeare’s most lyrical, poetic writing with the mischievous humor that Puck employs is a key to the genius of the work.

“I love the play because of the mixture it has of beautiful poetry and low comedy. And the otherworldly element I love too. There’s magic in it. There’s romance. I like the humor in the battle of the sexes,” Mollen explains. “It’s pretty light, so it’s not like Macbeth and Lady Macbeth or Lear versus his daughters. But I love the kind of satire about romantic love that’s in it - how fickle it can be and how overpowering it can be. The mechanicals - there’s no better comic creation in any of his plays. I think they’re just brilliant. The play within a play and those characters are hilarious.”

The director also mentions that he has cast several women in the traditionally male roles of mechanicals. In England, at the time of the play’s writing, women weren’t allowed to act in the theatre at all. Even female characters would have been played by men, a fact that Shakespeare used especially often in his comedies as a jumping-off point to explore themes of ambiguous sexuality and gender roles.

Mollen, who previously directed Shakespeare’s The Tempest for EPAC’s Shakespeare in the Park series in Endicott, plans to return to his hallmark of using modern music in scenic transitions, a juxtaposition that can lead the audience to see the work in a new way. And according to Mollen, the beauty of the venue and the material outweighs any small difficulties that they may present.

“The location is a beautiful spot,” he reflects, “Confluence Park in Binghamton. There’s no shelter, so it’s weather permitting. We decided on Midsummer because it’s one of his shorter pieces. And they want it to be ninety minutes. Midsummer is about two hours, so I did some trimming - mostly of mythological references that nobody would get, including me, and some long flowery speeches. There’s a lot of it where it is just too beautiful to cut any of it.”

Mollen is staging the play with minimal sets and lights to allow the actors to “share that empty space with the audience for an intimate showcase of Shakespeare’s wit and poetry.” Once the production is prepared, he hopes it will have an afterlife that will contribute to the cause of education in the area. “The Cider Mill and I have put in applications with BOCES to offer Shakespeare in the schools,” he shares. “It’s been in their catalogue, and it will be next year. We’re going to do Midsummer Night’s Dream - we’ll have the show ready and see if the people who were in the cast are going to be available this fall. So it’s two different things that dovetailed.” Interested teachers and administrators are encouraged to get in touch with the Cider Mill Playhouse for details.

The all-local cast of the production will include Matt Bavalle, Andrea Gregori, Conor Haynes, Missy Harris, Jessica Nogaret, Tony Yajko, and Carousel’s own Heather Merlis as the love-struck Helena.

Performances will be June 23rd and 24th at 7pm and June 25th at 2pm in Binghamton’s Confluence Park on North Shore Drive, where the Susquehanna and Chenango Rivers meet. Audience members are encouraged to bring chairs and blankets for their comfort. This event is presented in part by Bingpop.