A Dreamy Midsummer’s Night
The Nashville Shakespeare Festival’s 2026 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream began August 20th and continued through September 20th. One of Shakespeare’s better known comedies, A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a play full of magic, whimsy, and laughter. The plot is really two stories intertwined. The first component involves four lovers that get lost in the woods where fairies play some tricks on them and meddle in their love lives. The second story is about a group of amateur actors who are putting on a play for the Duke on the occasion of his marriage.
The play opens with a dispute: both Lysander (Nick Govindan) and Demetrius (Trey Smith) are requesting the hand of Hermia (Chelsea Bell). Her father insists that she marry Demetrius, but she is in love with Lysander. To make matters more complicated, Lysander tells us that Demetrius has made love to Helena (Caroline Conner), who is Hermia’s childhood friend, and that Helena is in love with Demetrius. Hermia’s father will not be swayed and the Duke decrees that she must do what her father commands or choose between death or the convent. Hermia and Lysander agree to run away together. Helena tells Demetrius of this plan with the hope of buying his good grace, and they follow the first couple.
Unknown to the humans, the fairy King Oberon (Taylor Novak) and the fairy queen Titania (Morgan-Ellene Davis) are in the woods, having their own quarrel about a changeling. King Oberon charges Puck (Reagan Allen), a mischievous sprite, to bring him a love potion, which he puts on Titania’s eyes while she’s sleeping with the hope that when she wakes she will fall in love with a bear or some other creature. After seeing Helena beg Demetrius to love her back, he also commands Puck to put the love potion on Demetrius’ eyes so he will fall in love with Helena. Of course, Puck misunderstands and places the love potion on Lysander’s eyes. He scorns Hermia and follows Helena around like a lovesick puppy. Once corrected, the love potion gets placed on Demetrius as well and then he too proclaims his love for a confused Helena.
While all this mischief is going on, a group of tradesmen from the village are planning and rehearsing a play to be performed after the Duke’s wedding. They’re foolish and terrible actors, so this creates plenty of opportunities for humor. Nick Bottom (Andrew Johnson) is the leader of this merry band, and perhaps the most foolish. Puck changes his head into that of a donkey and brings him to Titania who instantly falls in love.
By the end of Act IV, Oberon finally sets things to rights: Hermia and Lysander are back together, Bottom is no longer a donkey and Titania is no longer in love with him. Curiously they leave the love potion on Demetrius so that he will love and marry Helena. Act V is a play within a play. The audience gets to watch Bottom’s play along with the Duke and the lovers. When everyone exits the stage, Puck comes out for one last monologue including:
“If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended—
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear.”
If you’re upset by anything in the play, you can just imagine that it was all a dream.
Although the night of September 13th was hot and muggy, the play was well attended, and as the sun slipped below the horizon, the warm, dark night enhanced the dreamy quality of the play. One almost felt as though they were there lost in the trees with the lovers. The avenue this time was the historic bandshell at Centennial Park. It’s a beautiful area by The Parthenon. There was plenty of parking and the venue had bathrooms and food trucks right by it. As at all of the festival productions, seats were provided, but if you want to sit close, you should bring your own lawn chairs. If you want to be right near the stage, bring a picnic blanket to be up front.
Staging was sparse for this play, just a few trees with lanterns that stayed for each scene. Oddly enough, the play seemed to be set in the Weimar Republic of Germany. I felt as though this neither added nor detracted from the story. The lovers were well cast. Each had a strong stage presence, and they all had really wonderful chemistry with each other. One of my favorite parts was when Hermia ran and jumped to attack Helena and was caught and held back by Lysander and Demetrius. It was a marvelous bit of physical comedy. Because the language is different than how we speak casually today, an actor has to take care with the cadence and emphasis they place on words, and while I enjoyed this play very much, I felt as though many of the lines were delivered too earnestly and dramatically. This is a play with a lots of snide remarks and catty comments which lose meaning when delivered seriously.
I also was disappointed with how silly and slapstick this interpretation of the play was. Puck is a mischievous imp that sometimes frightens the villagers for fun. He’s smart and a little wicked at times. For some reason, in this production, Puck is a complete fool just stumbling around tripping on things and panting and being silly. It’s not at all how Shakespeare describes him, and it does a disservice to the character to make him so simple. Although I disagreed with interpretation, I think Reagan Allen did a great job with this character: she was making everyone laugh with her antics and I loved her delivery of the final monologue.
The light of the show was Andrew Johnson’s portrayal of Nick Bottom. Johnson has a wonderful command of Shakespearean language and is incredibly charismatic. He easily drew the most laughs and the most applause. It’s always enjoyable to watch someone who’s clearly having a great deal of fun with a role. His donkey brays were fantastic and the part when he pretends he is being shot over and over as Pyramus (in the play within a play) was hilarious. Especially when the applause started and he popped up to say “hold on, I’m not done!” And died again. If only it had stopped there, it would have been perfect. Unfortunately, in keeping with the silliness of the rest of the play, this joke was repeated four more times.
What was disappointing about all this absurdity was that it altered the play and made it hard for me to enjoy. I can only assume someone made the decision that the play wasn’t funny enough on its own. But with this decision, subtlety and nuance is lost. However, the audience was certainly laughing, so maybe I’m just a grump! I think I will imagine it was all a dream, as Puck bids me to do.
While this wasn’t my favorite production of theirs, it hasn’t dampened my excitement for next year’s production of A Winter’s Tale as well as a few other productions. We also have new space to look forward to: the Nashville Shakespeare Festival is planning a new Elizabethan-inspired theater structure at the Centennial Park Bandshell beginning in 2027! The Playhouse will be a custom-built structure designed to fit within the historic bandshell and will serve as a reusable home for the Nashville Shakespeare Festival
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Bethany is a wife, mother, and dog mom. In her spare time she likes to read, write fiction, and go out with her family. She feels lucky to live in Music City where she can go to the symphony or theatre all the time.
