Midsummer Magic In The Park

I always forget how much I love a city park until I go to one.

I don't mean those little parkette things with a couple benches and a sad-looking garden full of yellowing droopy plants whose blooms ended in May.

I mean a sprawling urban space. A place where there's big fields and bright wildflowers and a real threat of mosquito bites. A place where dogs carry frisbees and owners lounge on knitted blankets. A place where the din fades a little bit -but not too much. A place for a picnic and theatre later on. Maybe in the same spot.

I was reminded of my love for city parks during a recent trip to Toronto's High Park.

High Park has been around forever and a day, far as I'm concerned. It's in the west area of the city, surrounded by an assortment of interesting shops and restaurants.

Like many other urban parks, High Park has presented theatre within its wild confines every summer since 1983.

This year, Canstage has decided to produce its first play in High Park, A Midsummer Night's Dream. Never has a more appropriate pay been written for the wilds of an outdoor performance space.

The magical thing about seeing an outdoor Canstage production -they call it the Dream in High Park -is that the environment really does play a role in the work's presentation. Granted, I don't know how well Hamlet would play outside (or any tragedy for that matter), but for any light summer fare, Shakespearean or otherwise, the High Park stage is a perfect spot.

Director ahdri zhini mandiela has decided to give this year's production a decidedly Caribana-esque treatment, with lots of colour in costume, casting, and accent.

There is an interesting urban feel to the proceedings as well, with Lysander (a charming Antonio Cayonne) delivering his lines in a slam poet style, repeating words, emphasizing syllables, going off the traditional iambic pentameter rhythm.

Talk about giving new life to old verse. I could practically see Bill the Quill (aka Shakespeare) smiling through his plastic wine glass.

Toronto radio station The Flow 89.5 (who specialize in hip-hop/urban sounds) is one of the sponsors of the show, and this production of Midsummer fits in nicely with their demographic. I was happy to see a Shakespearean production so energetically presented, without it losing its beauty or poetry.

The lost lover-couples of Lysander/Hermia & Demetrius/Helena are played like the kids they actually are; they rebel against their parents, rail against conforming restrictions, stomp, fight, and run away to find what they think is a better life.

Performances by Coyonne, along with Maev Beaty (as Helena), Richard Harte (as Demetrius), and Holly Lewis (as Hermia), are not only believable but naturalistic. There's nothing forced or stale -no USAing (Urgent Shakespeare Acting) here, thank goodness. Demetrius outright exasperation at Helena's hot pursuit of him is believeable, his reactions brutal but also possessing the impetuousness of youth.

Kevin Hanchards Oberon/Theseus & Karen Robinson's Titania/Hippolyta are regal in their dual roles. Hanchard struts like a peacock in his beautifully-feathered Caribana-style costume and West Indies accent while ruling the spirit world, and moves like a Bay street golfing yuppie in the human one. Robinson keeps a consistency in sound and movement between her roles, perhaps underlining that female power is a consistent force that moves easily and gracefully in both worlds. Even when she falls for Matthew Kabwes creatively-costumed Bottom in his ass phase, she loses none of her beauty or elegance.

Of all the performers, it is Robinson who seems to have the best handle on Shakespeares language, rendering it with confidence and meaning, in a manner at home with mandielas vision but respecting the history behind it.

Colin Heaths Puck is truly one of the best I've ever seen. It is a physical, involved performance, with none of the idiotic mugging or posing so often seen in the role. His is a confident, fooling, 'trickster' style character, and his presence electrifies the naturalistic stage, blending into the trees surrounding it.

While initially a bit confusing, the divisions between the human and the spirit worlds serve to highlight the different-yet-the-same parallels within each; issues of jealousy, possessiveness, control, confusion and anger are part of each world, even if one has way better outfits.

Still, I couldn't help but feel slightly bewildered. Where are we, exactly? Certainly not Athens. Caribana? Whats the meaning of choosing that particular place? Surely the issues examined in the play, even in such a fresh style, would have much more gravity if the audience were given a marker. Much as the production is fun, it lacks a certain cohesiveness that begins, I think, in placement. It sometimes feel like less than the sum of its parts, which is a bit of a pity.

Still, if we are meant to be in Toronto, say, in High Park, in 2007, one certainly couldn't ask for a more appropriate, and beautiful, locale.

The unacknowledged player in A Midsummer Nights Dream has to be the park itself.

As the players continued, laughs grew, people munched, containers of juice (or was that wine?) were opened, dogs and their owners could be seen walking by at the sides of the stage, peeking around, stopping, curious. The stars came out.

Bugs? Yes.

But maybe they were faeries. You never know.

Cate Kustanczi is a Toronto-based journalist, broadcaster, and artist. She is the columnist with http://www.Torontowide.com and a producer/reporter with radio station CIUT.

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