PLEASANT ‘DREAM’ : Bard Watchers Slip Into Something More Comfortable and Tuck Into Shakespeare

Gentle Parents, woudst thou throwest thy babe into the moat without Floaties? Or bid him ride his two-wheeler without training wheels?

Nay, you cry?

Then hast Golden West College got a deal for you.

Using the premise that the appreciation of Shakespeare is, like swimming or biking, an acquired skill, a Golden West theater-arts professor has developed a three-part series that allows young audiences to ease into the Bard’s work.

This weekend, Charles Mitchell premieres the series’ second show, “Bottom’s Fantastic Dream,” a one-hour play that clips characters and dialogue from Shakespeare’s comedic fantasy, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and arranges them, he says, so children as young as 10 can enjoy the action. “Bottom’s Fantastic Dream,” which features 15 Golden West students in their late teens to early 20s, opens Friday at the college’s Stage West Studio Theater and continues through Dec. 10.

“Dream” follows September’s first installation, “Mother Goose Revue”--a variety show inspired by classic nursery rhymes. (“Love and Death and Shakespeare”--a collection of scenes from “Romeo and Juliet,” “Antony and Cleopatra” and “Othello”--closes the series in the spring.)

How, you may ask yourself, can Mother Goose help prepare young audiences for Shakespeare?

“Obviously, there are vastly different sources for each show, but there are quite a few similarities between them,” Mitchell explained. “ ‘Mother Goose’ used physical action to tell the stories, as does ‘Bottom’s Fantastic Dream.’ There was also rhyming dialogue, and Shakespeare is well known for using rhyming dialogue in plays like “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.’ ”

Children who missed the first show in the series shouldn’t have any problem keeping up with the second part, Mitchell said.

“ ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ is a very visual play, and very plot-oriented,” he explained. “And because it has so much action, (an adaptation of it) can work very well for children. You just couldn’t do this sort of thing with ‘Hamlet.’ In ‘Bottom’s Fantastic Dream,’ we’ve taken Shakespeare’s work down to a more manageable size.”

Many of the play’s best-known scenes are included, enhanced with swordplay, dancing and humor.

Dressed in Napoleonic-style costumes and backed by recorded music written by 19th-Century composer Felix Mendelssohn for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Mitchell’s cast will introduce audiences to the “Dream” team: Bottom, the foolish weaver transformed into a donkey by the spirit Puck; Titania, who, influenced by a spell from her husband, the fairy king Oberon, falls in love with Bottom, and the fairies who mess with the minds of four lovers lost in the forest, causing them to confuse just who is in love with whom.

Mitchell said he has carried the idea for “Bottom’s Fantastic Dream” since his college days, when he read an adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by David Garrick, an 18th-Century English actor, producer and playwright famous for his Shakespearean interpretations.

Repackaging a work that might otherwise by daunting for young audiences appealed to Mitchell for two reasons.

“It helps teach my own students how to (handle) Shakespeare,” explained Mitchell, who plans a full student production of “The Taming of the Shrew” at Golden West in March. “And, it’s a comfortable way for listeners to experience Shakespeare a little less formally than reading it out of a book.

“There isn’t as much of the language here, (but) the poetic form is still there. Anyone who sees this will be seeing and hearing Shakespeare.” * What: “Bottom’s Fantastic Dream.”

* When: Friday, Dec. 2, at 8 p.m.; Saturday, Dec. 3, at 3 and 8 p.m.; Sunday, Dec. 4, at 3 p.m.; Thursday, Dec. 8, at 8 p.m.; Dec. 9 at 8 p.m.; Dec. 10 at 3 and 8 p.m., and Dec. 11 at 3 p.m.

* Where: Stage West Studio Theater at Golden West College (15744 Golden West St., Huntington Beach).

* Whereabouts: Take the San Diego (405) Freeway to the Golden West Street exit. Head south. Turn right into the Gothard Street parking lot.

* Wherewithal: $9 general admission, $6 for children under 12.

* Where to call: (714) 895-8378.

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