An Uneven, Abbreviated ‘Midsummer’

In introducing a recent performance of her company’s abbreviated production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Stella Adler Theatre, Kings and Clowns artistic director Debbie Wastling felt it necessary to prepare adults in attendance for something less than what they might be expecting.

The company usually performs in schools for fifth- to seventh-graders, she explained, asking that adults imagine that they were the young people who would ordinarily be seeing the shortened version of the play. Unfortunately, the impression left was that the show might not meet adult standards, but it was OK for kids.

As it turns out, there isn’t any intention to dumb down in Wastling’s abridged adaptation of Shakespeare’s romantic fairy tale comedy. It’s simply too unevenly executed to be very persuasive in encouraging young people to turn on to classic theater.

While it does race by at quite a clip, clarity suffers more in performance than in pace. Except for Ken Salley’s assured, measured presence as Fairy King Oberon and a spark from John Tracy as Demetrius, one of the bewitched young lovers, it is only in the very scaled-down burlesque interlude, after fairy mischief has been put right and love has prevailed, that the production is as genuinely lively and unforced as it should be throughout.

Until then, there are moments--a myopic Helena in eyeglasses; the lovers’ ‘20s attire (Wastling again; Aurora Diaz does a nice job with makeup); a vaudevillian comic struggle between Lysander (Fredric Rooney) and Demetrius behind a pillar. But too many lines are declaimed rather than spoken, and there’s more energy than inspiration in all the chasing about.

When Bottom the Weaver (Tim Forsyth) and the bumbling troupe of strolling performers act out their “tragedy” of doomed lovers Pyramus and Thisbe, however, the cast is noticeably more comfortable and natural: Forsyth as Bottom playing the heroic Pyramus; Salley in his dual role as Quince the carpenter, who pedantically directs the play-within-the-play; Fredric Rooney, static as Lysander but funny as Flute in his wig-and-dress portrayal of the beautiful Thisbe; and Tracy, a comic standout as Snout the tinker, timorously playing the “Wall” that comes between the unfortunate lovers.

BE THERE

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Stella Adler Theatre, 6773 Hollywood Blvd., 2nd floor, Hollywood, Saturdays, 1 p.m. through Sept. 26. Free. (323) 465-4446. Running time: 1 hour.