Creative Midsummer Night's Dream!

I was wondering just what OSF would do with A Midsummer Night's Dream. It's played so often that it can easily become trite. How do you keep such a popular play that's performed so frequently fresh, engaging? Beyond that, how could they top the performance the did many years ago (was it twenty?) when, on the Elizabethan, Titania and Oberon vanished: disappeared, dissolved as I was looking right at them?

They did it marvelously!

Creative, fun, light-hearted, the production had a completely new, modern take on the fairies (men, all four of them, dancing in black tights and nearly-fluorescent tutus!), a fun-loving rendition of Duke Theseus by Greg Oden, Linda Alper as an offended, protective, not-quite-domineering Egeus, and a VW microbus complete with Richard Elmore playing a hippy Robin Starveling. Josiah Phillips gave a marvelously stiff performance as Tom Snout (and, yes, stiff was appropriate).

We all had a great time.