Pasadena Symphony Stages a Playful ‘Dream’

Embellishing Mendelssohn’s incidental music for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” with a production of the play itself seems a clear case of the tail wagging the dog. But that’s how Jorge Mester and the Pasadena Symphony opened their season Saturday at Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and a happy event it was in the main, zestful and unpretentious.

The musical matter at hand was Mendelssohn’s beloved score--the overture, the wedding march and the rest of it--as expanded by Erich Wolfgang Korngold for Max Reinhardt’s 1935 film. Korngold pillaged widely through Mendelssohn’s other works for extra bits that he wove together craftily with the rearranged original pieces and his own connecting elements.

With some further revision and restoration that formed the basic text, over which creative director John de Lancie laid a pragmatically truncated version of the play. The most grievous reduction came at the expense of the rustics, here just Bottom and Quince. In those roles Kurtwood Smith and Paul Richard Kessler coped with brave humor, while missing some of the play’s most famous lines.

This version only emphasized the ringmaster aspect of Theseus and Oberon, and Harry Groener presided charismatically in the dual role, with Sara Botsford as his graceful Hippolyta and Titania. Cara Barker, Laura Erlich, Michael Moore and Ben Livingston were the capably comic Athenian lovers, with Moore as Lysander singing in a light, overly amplified tenor.

With no set to speak of and minimal production values, the cast had to be also the props and special effects, and De Lancie and choreographer Nikki Greenburg kept their people in motion. A necessarily somewhat breathless Puck was vivaciously danced by Brenda Matthews, with equally energetic fluttering from young dancers Daryl Getman and Sarah Slice.

Pasadena Pro Musica provided the variously deployed adult chorus, and the ad hoc Crown City Children’s Chorus swelled the fairy ranks with cheering presence. Suzanna Guzman and Hila Plitmann sang the lullabies of the older fairy attendants.

Back of it all the Pasadena Symphony played with its customary verve. Mester led a lithe performance, not perfect in detail but rich in character and spirit.