A Midsummer Night's Dream: A closing weekend review

For those of you who missed Strangeloop's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Chicago's littlest reviewer, Ada Grey, is demanding a remount.

Once upon a time I went to a show and it was called A Midsummer Night's Dream. It was directed by Holly Robison and written by William Shakespeare. This Midsummer Night's Dream was set in the 1940s and it was in a very small space. It was also in two rooms and it was sort of in promenade style. The space was too small for the audience and actors to roam freely, but you were in different spaces and you were not in seats but around the actors on the floor or on benches. I thought that all of the actors were good; I wasn't disappointed by any of them. How you interacted with everyone and how you felt like you were in different places when you moved from the castle to the forest made this play delightful.

Read the entire review here.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream' closes this weekend

The final four performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream begin tonight. This is the last weekend to see this show, which audiences have called "a magnificent and intimate production. Such fine acting and a joy to witness!"

Tickets are going fast (as all closing weekends do). Get yours now on Brown Paper Tickets.

Strangeloop's intimate approach to William Shakespeare’s classic tale of love, magic and fairies features promenade-style staging, in which audience members move and sit amongst the action of the play with no formal differentiation between stage and seating.

The production takes place in the 1940s – a time period that shares with the ancient Athens of Shakespeare’s original setting political turmoil, war and the subduing of monstrous beasts (literal in one case, figurative in the other). But despite the unrest of the outside world, love still finds a place to bloom during this, the shortest night of the year.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through May 25 at the side project theatre (1439 W. Jarvis Ave.) in Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood (just steps from the Jarvis Red Line stop), at 8 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. on Sundays.

From Queen of the Amazons to Queen of the Fairies, Jackson shows herstrength in

As an actress who has been on stage since she was 5, Avondale/North Center resident Caitlin Jackson has played everyone from Abigail in “The Crucible” to Bette Davis in Hell in a Handbag's production “Christmas Dearest.”

But for her latest turn on stage, she has stepped into not just one, but two roles from out of mythology. In her third production of William Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Jackson has taken on Hippolyta, the famed Amazon Queen who lost a war and her heart to Theseus, as well as the Fairy Queen Titania, whose eternal battle for love and supremacy with her Fairy King, Oberon, puts them in the path of four young lovers lost in the woods outside of Athens.

Read more about Caitlin, including her work in Strangeloop's A Midsummer Night's Dream in the NorthCenter-RoscoeVillage Patch.

Kitty Mortland takes to the stage, Internet in traditionally male roles

Northbrook native Kitty Mortland has lately made a business of playing Shakespearean characters that are traditionally male, taking their already complex personas and adding yet another level with a feminie twist.

Read more about Kitty, including her turn as Egeus in Strangeloop's production A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Chicago Tribune's local section.

Director's Note: A Midsummer Night's Dream

I came to this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream through a series of happy coincidences.

I had seen productions performed in promenade and loved the staging. The experience of being on the same level with the actors, surrounded by their world, was an incredibly vivid and exciting experience. I felt an immediate urge to do a promenade staging myself, and for several years, I have wanted to do so with one Shakespeare’s plays.

When discussions began in the company about Strangeloop’s upcoming season, I realized it might be the time to finally do it. Promenade is unusual and can put a unique, visceral, intimate twist on classic – a concept that fit right into Strangeloop’s mission. I also knew that we had The Side Project space. While small, it offered many things that could lend themselves to a promenade staging. With its large lobby and multiple doors, I felt it was a venue where the entire space could be utilized for performance. Moving an audience with the action through the space was another concept I had been contemplating for a long time. It seemed to be the right time and the right space for this staging.

I settled on Midsummer as the play because it’s a classic and endearing comedy. Much of Strangeloop’s recent productions, as well as my own personal projects, explored the tragic or dark side of stories. I wanted to do something lighthearted. I felt it was time to do a big, fun, rollicking comedy that made an audience laugh. Midsummer was the natural choice.  It has two distinct worlds – the "normal" world of Athens and the magical forest – which plays perfectly into the staging. And what I enjoy is, at its heart, it’s a honey-tongued farce that manages to be broadly comic while making incredibly profound observations on the nature of love.

Setting the story in the 1940s seemed natural, as well. It was a time of war, upheaval and some uncertainty, but the period somehow has its own classic, timeless sense that lends itself to so many stories. It was a time of darkness that produced to goofy screwball comedies and bright, boisterous big band music. That is ultimately what I tried to accomplish with this production – laughter and optimism in the face of uncertainty and darkness.

— Holy Robison