Quiet Storm: Synetic at Midsummer
Alex Mills as Puck. Photo by Ray Gniewek.
The hiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiive in Synetic Theater’s nonverbal, nonstop production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream!
Okay, so maybe not the hills, but certainly the forest prowled by Alex Mills’s supple and lupine mischief-maker, Robin Goodfellow. Upholstered in ghostly blue fur and forever coiling his spine in ways that will make any chiropractors in the house see dollar signs, he’s the best thing about this fourth Synetic Shakespeare adaptation, sans verse, sans words, sans speech, sans — well, yes, pretty much everything that makes the bard The Bard, you know?
There’s something innately perverse about doing Shakespeare mute. We all know he appropriated his plots from elsewhere, but we remember them as his because he elevated them with poetry that still enchants four centuries later. I didn’t see Synetic’s prior, verbiage-free versions of Romeo & Juliet, MacBeth, or Hamlet. Performing the latter — a relentlessly cerebral, psychologically meticulous work — without words seems particularly impossible. Apparently, they pulled it off, though. Reviewing Hamlet: The Rest Is Silence for the Washington Post in April 2002, William Triplett called it “easily the most daring and innovative piece of theater seen on a Washington stage in a long time.”
Compared to that, muzzling Midsummer, with its misdirected couplings and abundant chases, fights, and fairies, seems like a piece of triple-wedding cake. Ben Cunis is credited with the adaptation, and the fight choreography. Synetic’s usual creative team is in place: Husband-and-wife director-choreographer duo Paata Tsikurishvili and Irinia Tisikurishvili (who also plays Titania, the faerie queen), along with Konstatine Lortkipanidze, who handled the sound design and composed the score — alternately pulsating electronica and woodwind whimsy.
Irina Koval and Marissa Molnar. Photo by Ray Gniewek.
You can’t blame the judges for being awestruck. The eye-candy here is exotic and plentiful, from Anastasia Ryurikov Simes’s vine-festooned, eminently climbable forest set to her equally ornate costumes: scaly armor for Oberon; elegant evening gowns that tear conveniently into saucy lingerie for Hermia and Helena.
Then there’s the cast, necessarily long on fit, attractive types. As Helena, Marissa Molnar is particularly adept at the kind of clowning required as the show’s dual suitors, Demetrius and Lysander, fight over her.
Lortkipanidze, meanwhile, shows up onstage to contribute a live piano score — complemented by Levan Lortkipanidze on guitar and flute — to the Rude Mechanicals scenes. Lortkipanidze’s piano is missing its front panel, for no obvious reason other than that it’s fun to watch the mallets hit the strings.
It’s funny, the things you notice when everybody just shuts up for a second.
Synetic Theater's nonverbal A Midsummer Night's Dream is at the Kennedy Center's Family Theater through June 14. The performance runs approximately 90 minutes without an intermission. Tickets are available here.