In magical return to its birth. APT embraces the human heart of 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

By Nancy Malitz, Chicago on the Aisle

August 31, 2017

Is there a better way to fall under the spell of Shakespeare than through “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”? Not if it’s the current production under the stars by American Players Theatre, which will get the job done for ages 7 to 97 at the least.

APT’s Hill Theatre is but an afternoon’s drive from Chicago into the Wisconsin woods near Madison, nestled against gently rolling countryside near the Spring Green country estate of iconic 20th-century architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The company’s artists – more than a few of them based in Chicago – are uniformly proficient at finding the human warmth in Shakespeare’s comedy and at making the bard’s meaning clear in minute detail to contemporary audiences.

When APT opened, in 1980, this was the play the company chose for its debut. Little wonder that the players should select it again to celebrate their newly revitalized 1,140-seat outdoor arena, with much improved acoustics and a dizzying array of levels and trap doors for effects that are presto-change-o. And for any theatergoer who has yet to become enchanted with the English-speaking world’s greatest playwright, the production will be revelatory: The inhibiting filter of nearly four and a quarter centuries of changes to our spoken language just dissolves, as if by magic, in the custody of this talented troupe under the openly inviting direction of John Langs.

You can credit the impish fairy sprite Puck (Cristina Panfilio) for much of the fun.

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