THEATER REVIEWS : Sedona Setting Gives ‘Dream’ Mystical Air

“Sedona, Arizona, 1595” is the fanciful setting for Colin Cox’s staging of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at LATC’s Tom Bradley Theatre.

“Midsummer” dates from around 1595, though Sedona didn’t exist then. Cox and his Will & Company troupe pretend that Sedona (actually founded in 1902) was a Spanish colonial town. When the Sedonans venture into the countryside, they mingle with Native American spirits instead of conventional fairies.

This provides the production’s signature visual motif. The actors portraying spirits wear remarkably lifelike animal or bird heads (designer: Kathy Herbert) that hide most of their human facial features. King Oberon (Benito Martinez) is an eagle, Queen Titania (Pamela Segall) is a puma, and mischievous Puck (Fran deLeon), is, of course, a coyote. When Puck concocts the donkey’s head for Bottom, it’s not much of a stretch.

LaWrence Curtis’ backdrop is a beautifully drawn image of the Sedona area’s red rocks and Oak Creek greenery. A twinkling night sky comes with a little flying saucer off on one side as a nod to Sedona’s modern-day new age reputation. Indian rock drawings glow in the dark. Cynthia Shiley’s lighting of the nighttime scenes is soft and magical. It’s a setting that’s fitting for the dreamy, mystical elements of this comedy.

Cox and his actors make sure that the play’s boisterously comic side is also well tended. The four lovers (Jose Urbina, J. Philip Lester, Trula M. Marcus, Jillian Crane) engage in splendid slapstick. And the artisans create even bigger laughs, though they don’t fit easily into the Sedona concept--some of them look and sound like Southern-fried hillbillies.

That’s certainly the case with Carl Weintraub’s Bottom, but he’s so masterfully full of himself that objections fade quickly. Thomas Ashworth’s Flute, Tom Allard’s Snout, Eugene Rubenzer’s Snug and Consuelo Aduviso’s Robin Starveling find amusingly different ways of playing the rube, while Ron Marasco’s Quince maintains a funny air of genteel aggravation.

A few of the actors don’t project their lines very well, and Cox cut Puck’s “hungry lion” speech, which might have deepened the play a bit. But otherwise this “Dream” is the best work I’ve seen from Will & Company.

* “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”: Tonight at 8; Saturday, 2 and 8 p.m.; Thursday-April 19, 8 p.m.; April 20, 2 and 8 p.m.