Backstage Midsummer Review

(Learn more about Flux’s Midsummer here.)

Our first review is in from Backstage, and they’ve kindly made us Pick, calling it “a production of engaging lucidity and immediacy…”

(Michael Davis as Oberon in tech)

“In addition to his imaginative and intelligent staging within the usual budgetary confines of Off-Off-Broadway…”
(Charlotte Graham as Wisp, Kira Blaskovich as Titania, Tiffany Clementi as Peaseblossom, Hannah Peck as Cobweb, and Christina Shipp as Bottom in rehearsal)
“…Schulenburg has melded his 20 actors into an effective ensemble…”

(Fairies and Puck in the forest of tech)

“…Both the spookiness of a magical forest at night…”

(Jake Alexander as Lysander, Candice Holdorf as Helena, Amy Fitts as Hermia, Michael Davis as Oberon in rehearsal)

“…where young love is thrown into turmoil…”

(Maggie Hamilton as Quince)

“…and the comedy of the clownish mechanicals as they attempt to become thespians are nicely realized”

(Christina Shipp, our Bottom, on break)

“Bottom is played by Christina Shipp, who physically is little more than a slip of a girl, but she attacks the role with an uninhibited comic flair.”
(Michael Swartz as Moth and Nitya Vidyasagar as Puck in rehearsal)
“Another notable characterization is Nitya Vidyasagar’s petite and playfully malicious Puck, who, with her immense eyes and quirky movement, almost looks computer-generated and personifies the meeting of the real and the fantastic, the light and the dark, within Shakespeare’s classic.”

It is a generous review, taking into account the whole of our relationship with the play by including the note about the Imagination Compact; and as this reviewer came on our first and only preview, with all the little errors that are heir to it, I am especially grateful that he focused on where the play is going. Please join us on that journey!