Mauckingbird's "Midsummer Night's Dream'

At its recent annual membership meeting, the Theatre Alliance of Greater Philadelphia reconfirmed its commitment to achieving the goals set by "Engage 2020," an ambitious program of the Philadelphia Cultural Alliance that seeks to double the region's arts participation by the year 2020. This benchmark presents no small task for Theatre Alliance members, who already enjoy an annual audience of 450,000. Doubling that number in the next ten years— especially if the Alliance also wants to fulfill its goal of shedding theater's "elitist image"— would presumably require attracting a large number of young people with minimal prior exposure to theater.

If anyone at the Theatre Alliance wants to see how to attract young people, they should head over to Temple and see Mauckingbird's impressive, gender-bending staging of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. This imaginative, highly theatrical production offers a spectacle that the Facebook generation can sink its teeth right into, notwithstanding the limitations of Mauckingbird's scatterbrained approach to the text.

If nothing else, director Peter Reynolds understands a young audience. Mauckingbird's summer residency at Temple— where Reynolds also teaches— enabled him to populate his cast with young, attractive and energetic students or alumni. He and co-director Lynne Innerst chose a schoolyard setting, and they incorporate computer-generated multimedia without intruding upon the drama (a feat that directors rarely achieve). The production also pokes fun at text messaging while believably showing how it can work as a communication device in a character's performance.

Cross-gender casting

Reynolds also chose a smart play for bending gender and blending homosexual romance into Shakespeare's traditionally hetero world. From the outset, Midsummer reflects the foolishness of love across generations ("Lord what fools these mortals be!"), plays with the capriciousness of sexual attraction and notes something that young people experience daily: "The course of true love never did run smooth."

The level of engagement with Shakespeare's play also benefits from the re-casting of Lysander as a woman (Emily Letts) and of Helena as a man (Patrick Joyce). Moreso than their elders, young people daily encounter— and mostly tolerate— homosexuality amongst their peers. A schoolteacher friend of mine in North Carolina says a week doesn't pass without her seeing (and separating, as per school policy) girls making out in hallways. Across college campuses, students have adopted (mostly) affectionate terms for widespread collegiate sexual experimentation (for example "BUG," as in "bisexual until graduation").

More than anything else where young people are concerned, Mauckingbird's clipped 90-minute production justifiably subordinates Shakespeare's verbiage to the spectacle onstage. The fairies rock Oberon to sleep with Samantha Bellomo's slick choreography; Lauren Perigard's costumes range from the prep school students' crested blazers and plaid skirts to the fairies' black vinyl, zippers, mesh shirts and goggles; and the Mechanicals present their play-within-a-play as a wild knockoff of Lady Gaga videos.

All the action takes place inside Dan Soule and S. Cory Palmer's vivid but minimal set design of luminescent dappled forests. Dom Chacon's emotive lighting fuses with Chris Colucci's microphone echoes and electronica beats to generate the feel of an ecstasy-fueled rave.

A 90-minute party

I would have partied there for far longer than 90-minutes if this production had let me. In its more raucous moments— mostly provided by Perigard's audacious costumes (outrageous costumes of tinseled barbwire and shaggy red body suits) and the squealing, brash performance of Danielle Pinnock as Nick Bottom— I erupted with laughter.

Unfortunately, the removal of huge chunks of text disjointed the play's three subplots from their usual coherency. Why does Puck so willingly engage in his antics on Oberon's behalf? Why do the Mechanicals put on a play in the first place? In this production, we don't know. Like a music video, the fast-paced direction sweeps past every incoherent intersection of each plot line.

Moreover, Mauckingbird's "gay prism" approach loses credibility in its boarding school setting: I no more expected these kids to want to get married than I believe that a father at such a "school of the future" could then threaten his daughter with death if she doesn't comply. Only the stellar bickering and longing performed by Joyce, Thompson, Erin Mulgrew (as Hermia) and Letts overcame my disbelief.

In this production, spectacle covers the script's logical flaws. Whether such a formula can consistently attract audiences to theaters is another matter.

Lady Gaga's previous incarnation

Spectacle-driven singers like Lady Gaga, David Bowie, and Prince enjoy immense success because they build their visual outlandishness upon a tower of talent. As a result, you don't see second-rate imitations, because neither the music industry nor the fans will tolerate them.

However, if you watch old clips of Lady Gaga back when she called herself Stefani Germanotta, you can understand that without her dazzling costumes and the visual spectacle of her shows, this talented singer-songwriter wouldn't have risen above the crowd of similarly talented singer-songwriters. By the same token, a more-straightforward production of Midsummer would have vanished into the ho-hum background of the four other stagings of that show in Philadelphia this season (with yet another to follow next year).

This approach may work well for young people— at least once. For those directors tempted to imitate Reynolds, the key question must be: Would you use this approach for Shaw or Ibsen?