LONG BEACH BALLET’S ‘MIDSUMMER’

Long Beach Ballet’s new two-act production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” set out to give full narrative value to Shakespeare’s story. So it did, with the literalness and opaqueness of a comic-book version. Seen Saturday at the Long Beach Terrace Theater, the ballet shifted fitfully between mime exposition and divertissements without revealing dramatic shadings or transposing the play into purposeful dramatic dance.

Stock mime carried the stories of the lovers: “I” (Hermia points to self) “love” (cup hands over heart) “him” (points to Lysander). The dancing never amplified the point, just repeated it.

Neither style nor steps clearly delineated characters, save Puck’s signature satyr jumps and Oberon’s grand jetes . Titania, Hermia and Helena’s dances were nearly indistinguishable. The use of nine non-dancing roles in this production (six artisans, Theseus, Hippolyta, and Egeus) show just how irrelevant dance became to the drama.

Some splendid dance opportunities went begging, as when Lysander and Hermia bedded down in the forest without the amorous advances that detail that moment in the play. This production also excised the lullaby for Titania, missing the chance to give the fairies a dance integral to the action.

Choreographer Christopher Tabor eschewed the familiar Mendelssohn score in favor of taped music by Prokofiev. The choice was logical in lieu of a commissioned score, because the music imposed no dominant dramatic structure.

But the choreography failed to leave its stamp on the neutrality of the music. In places, the dancing actually ran contrary to the music, as when Puck made his first impish entrance to big, bounding music or when slow, sorrowful music accompanied the sprightly entrance of the fairies in Act II. No sense of the supernatural emerged in the music Tabor selected, nor any hint of the sexual undercurrents of the play. Charles P. Davis’ scenery and lighting created an imposing forest, but the ballet dissipated the mood of mystery and dark magic.

Lesli Wiesner danced Titania with her usual strong technique and aplomb but without dramatic conviction. Company director David Wilcox made a sadly earthbound Oberon: peevish in conflict, low and narrow in dozens upon dozens of jetes.

Helena Ross brought secure dancing and suitable tenderness to Hermia. Elsewhere the dancing ranged from serviceable (Daryl Bjoza as Lysander, Andy Kwan as Puck) to substandard (William Andre as Demetrius).

Numbering nearly 40 (plus supernumerary tykes in tutus), the company looked strained overall. Turns were problematic throughout the evening, from Andre’s ragged tours en l’air to Cynthia Strang’s (Helena’s) fouettes that fell just short of disaster to the ensemble’s rough terminations and pirouettes that fell off pointe.