The Justice

Media Credit: David Sheppard-Brick From left, Thomas Arnott '11 and Stephanie Grinley '12 appear in Hold Thy Peace's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream.'

Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream is a delightful romp in a forest where sprites dwell and lovers wander; Hold Thy Peace had a wonderful opportunity in performing it, directed by Taylor Shiells '09. Unfortunately, this production of the play was set at the beginning of the Meiji Restoration, a period of revolution and modernization in Japan, in a conceit that wasn't so much fresh and interesting as it was clunky and affected, and though the cast was solid, the setting distracted from the actors' better attributes.

The costumes and makeup dictated by the period were lovely and often striking, but the contrived, stylized movements of Edo-period theater were ill-chosen and mediocrely executed. The actresses did not have the requisite practice with the kimono to elegantly rise from a kneeling position and consequently stumbled slightly as they stood. And even though the choice to require such motions on the actors may not have been a good one, it should have at least been consistently carried out, as it was almost annoying that elements such as the mincing walk of the upper-class Japanese woman and the bow to one's superior only occurred sporadically. Particularly cumbersome was the scene in which Titania is sung to sleep by her coterie of fairies-while Stephanie Grinley '12 was satisfactory as the fairy queen; sliding one's arms through the air to Shakespearean lullaby set to vaguely Eastern melody does not Japanese dance make. And the choice to have Titania sleep on the stage throughout intermission was positively confounding: many members of the audience could be heard puzzling as the house lights came up whether this was actually intermission and what her inexplicable presence contributed to the experience.

Similarly, the production clearly suffered from lack of a lighting designer. Though at first the lighting came off as pleasantly minimalist-going along with the spare bamboo set-by the second act the slight color shifts that were the only change in lighting were simply overly subtle; with nothing to differentiate forest from palace or night from day, the magic of the midsummer night faded into blandness.

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