Word: oberon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...parody not only of his own romantic aesthetic but also of the origin of the fabled partnership as well. Here is the regal Sibley, the gossamer Titania of The Dream, reduced to a semislattern with one thing on her mind. Here is the princely Dowell, once her dashing Oberon, as an even more unsatisfying lover, a sexually indeterminate gigolo with Saturday-night fever. At the end of the first, teasingly erotic pas de deux, Dowell effortlessly lifts Sibley aloft and, in one graceful, fluid motion, floats her offstage. The gesture promises a lovers' private communion...
...disease, alas, is catching. The source of the sorcery, the chief spinners of this Dream, must be Puck and his master Oberon, king of the fairies. Lapine's boldest experiment is to cast a woman (Marcell Rosenblatt) as Puck. But she has been directed to substitute screeching tomboyishness for sly sprightliness, and the resulting overaggressiveness is painful to watch, something like seeing the only girl on a Little League team overcompensate for her gender. Oberon is done to a star turn by William Hurt (Body Heat), who is so in love with the sound of his own voice that...
...Derrah's hulking Puck fails to spark the rest of the production in quite the same inhuman way as Mark Linn-Baker's in the spring. Derrah, verbally agile but physically sluggish, acts the comic sidekick; where Linn-Baker's animality was ferral, Derrah's is docile, dog-like--Oberon's best friend...
...Mark Linn-Baker's Puck, a nasty demon who sticks his tongue out and rasps at friend and foe. His satyr's outfit and white makeup don't distance him from humankind nearly so much as his utter indifference to pain and suffering in others. When Oberon orders him to undo the effects of his mistake on the lovers and to anoint Lysander's eyes with the potion that will restore his love for Hermia, he nearly fouls up again and gives Demetrius the charm. He says "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" spitefully, not compassionately, and sounds like...
...Hermia separate "as may well be said becomes a virtuous bachelor and a maid" before they fall asleep, roll towards each other and exchange places before waking up. Even Linn-Baker's alien Puck adds comic touches, hopping to his sing-song tetrameter or grimacing with impatience at Oberon's bombast...