But that father-daughter moment is about as serious as Cofield’s staging gets. In the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater at Marcus Garvey Park, fun is the main point. And if this free “Midsummer” doesn’t deliver as much across-the-board delight as you may expect from the Classical Theater of Harlem, it does have a charismatic drama stirrer in Mykal Kilgore’s Puck, sprinkling magic for the fairy king, Oberon (a sympathetic Victor Williams).
There is also a giggle-inducing gaggle of rude mechanicals, who put on the adorable show within the show. The comedian Russell Peters is billed as the star of “Midsummer,” playing one of them: Nick Bottom, the weaver whom Puck transfigures into an ass, and with whom the ensorcelled fairy queen, Titania (Jesmille Darbouze, not given enough to do), falls in love. Peters, however, is scheduled to be absent from much of the run.
On opening night, Jaylen D. Eashmond — Peters’s understudy, fresh out of New York University’s graduate acting program — played Bottom, and proved an endearing comic match for two of the company’s funniest regulars: Allen Gilmore as Peter Quince, the carpenter, and Carson Elrod as Tom Snout, the tinker. This band of rude mechanicals revels in silliness, and thrives.
As for the lovers, each is portrayed appealingly — Hermia (Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens) and Lysander (played on Sunday by Marcus Fitzpatrick, the understudy), who are eloping through the forest; Demetrius (Brandon Carter), who follows them on a baby-blue bicycle; and the adoring Helena (Noah Michal), who pursues Demetrius even as he spurns her.
What’s missing is a palpable sense of the relationships among them before fairy spells shift the dynamics. Without that underpinning, the comedy is forced, as in the eruption between Hermia and Helena, dear longtime friends, which seems no more than a catfight.
Read More: ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Review: Sprinkling Magic Under a Night Sky
