Dream a Little Dream of Me: “Midsummer Dreamers” at the Cape Rep

Something unusual is happening to me here: I cannot find words adequate to communicate the feeling, the intensity, the sheer beauty of Midsummer Dreamers, now playing through July 13 at the Cape Rep Theatre in Brewster.

Kirsten Peacock and Nick Nudler—themselves established Shakespearian actors—take A Midsummer Night’s Dream and deconstruct it, retelling the story with grace and humor and definite panache, popping in lines from and references to different Shakespeare works and imbuing it with an energy that fairly snaps and crackles on the stage.

Oh, and did I mention the aerials?

The adaptation owes much to director Maura Hanlon’s deft touch, but Peacock and Nudler (collaborating as Cosmic Mirth) bring such an intimate physicality to everything they’re doing onstage that it’s hard to imagine a world outside of these two—even one that includes a director!

It’s everything Shakespeare ever could wish: funny, bawdy, thoughtful, mischievous, wild, wonderful, joyous, intimate. As each actor alternates playing various parts from within (and without) Midsummer, the story moves at breakneck speed which can almost match the speed of the actors.

They ask important questions. How did nothing other than a dream make Tatania change course and forgive Oberon? How do dreams influence, warn, entertain, and ultimately change us? The couple we see at the very beginning of the piece are contemporary New Yorkers, a couple tired at the end of a day and each resentful the other hasn’t fulfilled their expectations (never before have I seen such emotion around laundry); the couple they reclaim at the end have been transformed by their shared adventures, fears, joys, and love rediscovered through a dream.

And it has to be said—this play is so much sheer fun, pulling together the oddest juxtapositions of music and memory and text with cultural references galore, Shakespeare’s story offering inspiration for a boldly physical, funny, scary, and moving exploration of a relationship.

Nudler and Peacock are both fiercely talented both as actors and as physical performers, and parts of this show will absolutely take your breath away. They’ve added aerial performances into the story (and the Cape Rep stage is especially accommodating for this) so that there are two planes—horizontal and vertical—for them to exploit.

The conceit of a shared dream is able to take both cast and audience into personal, vulnerable spaces that aren’t often experienced at the theater. And the aerial sequence toward the end of the dream? All I’ll say is that it will make you wish you were in love.

I’ve always appreciated Bottom for feeling so comfortable in fairyland. Midsummer Dreamers aren’t just comfortable there—they embody its magic. Do not miss this brilliant, beautiful play.

(Oh—and watch for the dinosaur entrance. Not something you’ll usually see in Shakespeare!)

review by Jeannette de Beauvoir

photos by Bob Tucker/Focalpoint