SOLVANG’S THEATERFEST PRODUCTION : ‘DREAM’: SASSY & DELECTABLY LUNATIC, TOO

SOLVANG, Calif. —  Imagine the Cat in the Hat trying on Shakespeare--or the Grinch trading in Christmas for midsummer.

You don’t have to. The PCPA Theaterfest, at the heart of this California-Danish community, has done it for us. John C. Fletcher’s conceptual “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (in a summer that has seen them all) is the sassiest and most delectably lunatic Shakespeare in memory. Under his unflappable direction, this Dr. Seuss-inspired cartoon strip of a “Midsummer” has to be the capstone of Theaterfest’s strongest season since its founder, Donovan Marley, left it for the Denver Center Theatre Company some four years ago.

Last week the San Diego Rep opened a truncated, partly sung jazz version of “Midsummer” that works so hard at being different it ends up merely being strained.

Last week, too, director Thomas Bradac opened a perfectly self-respecting, traditionally lyrical version of this comedy for the Grove Shakespeare without a hair out of place. Its gorgeous gnarled-root set (by Stanley A. Meyer), diaphanous costumes (Shigeru Yaji), strong musical spine (Chuck Estes) and well-spoken cast (chief among them Benjamin Stewart, Carl Reggiardo, Maria Mayenzet, Gregory Mortensen, Carol Flanders, Bud Leslie and Deborah Gates) add up to a romantic vision so prim it begs for the infusion of a little mayhem.

So what are we saying? That we shouldn’t play around with Shakespeare or do him traditionally either? What’s a theater to do?

Watch Fletcher.

What he’s managed in Solvang is to strike a balance between invention and intelligence. For all its frequent outrageousness, his “Midsummer” neither overlooks the script nor abuses it, nor stands too much in awe. It shamelessly steals lines from “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” tosses them into this salad for color, like olives, mixes them up with distinctly un Shakespearean modern American (Demetrius to the nagging Helena: “Get thee to a nunnery, why dontcha?”) and comes out a winner. The fun is always mindful of the boundaries--playful, but never cloying.

It buoys and energizes an audience, instead of wearing it out.

Designer Thomas Buderwitz’s witty pop-up stage, cut-out flats of Dr. Seussian landscapes, droopy plants and perky puppets (the Peaseblossoms of this world live on Sesame Street), is more than matched by costumer Mary (Sam) Fleming’s high fashion whimsy: uninhibited stripes, ballooning pants, goony creatures, gaudy colors and mock Shriner hats for those “rude mechanicals” from Local 32.

That kind if humor is not limited to the designers. Fletcher exercises the same controlled cavorting, using monkey business as a spice rather than a main ingredient. Which is why, when Oberon zaps the fairy guarding the sleeping Titania, tosses her up in the air and off the rear of the stage like a basketball, it’s just unexpected enough to hit us full force.

A lot of Fletcher’s comic touches rely on an element of surprise that’s a cut above--such as having landscape and trees run past Hippolyta’s and Theseus’ carriage, rather than the other way around; or having Puck say “I go, I go, see how I go,” and vanish vertically--whoosh!--through a trap door.

(The obscenely double-jointed James Wesley Mann plays Puck and don’t be fooled by the formality of that name: He is such a consummate natural clown that the stage won’t be able to hang on to him if he ever catches the eye of some smart television producer.)

The fun is indulged in here at the most serious level and it shows. Aside from the excellence of the design, the music, composed and performed by Peter Erskine (and aptly recorded at Puck Productions), is superb. Its inspirational pedigree includes Brahms, Mendelssohn, Debussy, Korngold, Josef Zawinul, Lyle Mays and Peter Gabriel. Not too shabby.

For the final and most astonishing fillip, when the mechanicals farcical play-within-a-play comes to an end and Flute/Thisbe finds Bottom/Pyramus dead on the ground, he/she gathers him up in her arms and without warning, changes key, giving a straight reading of her heartbreak.

Suddenly, the outer play turns dark. For an amazing and inspired moment we are perceptibly moved. It is our real and very palpable awakening from the “Dream.”

This show opened July 31. By the time it closes it will have run a dismaying grand total of nine performances. That’s shocking. Theaterfest artistic director Jack Shouse should do everything in his power to move this “Midsummer” or extend it or whatever. Nobody said life was fair, but this is criminal.

‘A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM’ Shakespeare’s comedy presented by the PCPA Theaterfest in Solvang. Director John Fletcher. Original music Peter Erskine. Set design Thomas Buderwitz. Lighting Michael Peterson. Costumes Mary (Sam) Fleming. Sound David R. White. Stage manager Mary Emery. Cast David Kazanjian, Carolyn J. Keith. John Furse, John DeMita, KT Vogt, Julia Fletcher, Vince Melocchi, Ezra Barnes, Michael Scott Ryan, Grace Zandarski, Carlotta R. Scarmack, James Wesley Mann, Steve Johnson, Lawrence Hecht, Rod Gnapp, Philip Brotherton, Philip Stockton, Robert Kempf, Abel Partida and many others. Final performances at Solvang’s Festival Theater are tonight, Friday and Sept. 5, 8:30 p.m. Tickets: $13.50; (800) 221-9469 or (805) 688-7688.