When A Midsummer Night’s Dream comes to the Vertigo Studio Theatre stage later this May, it will be a different and darker production than those staged recently in Calgary.

Yet veteran director, Ron Jenkins, who is directing the performance for The Shakespeare Company and Hit and Myth Productions, said it’ll still be the funny accessible story of love and the supernatural that audiences have come to love.

“It’s one of people’s favourites, and it’s accessible, it’s funny, it’s fun, and you’ve got the romance… and you’ve got the faeries,” he said.

It’s on the motivations and characterizations of the conflict between the faeries—the battle between King Oberon and Queen Titania—that Jenkins said would set this performance apart.

“I think we are taking a bit of a different take on it from other productions that I’ve seen. The fairies are good and evil, they’re tricksters, and that we lean into the darkness a bit more, the fairy lore more, and how that affect the characters in the play.”

For audiences, that means a little more in the vein of Neil Gaiman than recent family-friendly matinee performances.

In fact, that was exactly the allusion that came to mind by the productions assistant stage manager Grace Lu, said Jenkins.

“She was like, ‘you’ve gotta see this run, because I’m a huge fan of Neil Gaiman.’ She’s a huge Sandman fan, and she got it to me right away, because of the way I was talking about the play,” he said.

That retelling of Midsummer by Gaiman, which won a World Fantasy Award, leaned into a more traditional view of faeries as both benevolent and malevolent that would have been shared during Shakespeare’s time.

That feel of the original lore, said Jenkins, was what the production aimed to bring to audiences.

“The fairies that we see mostly now are a modern take on fairies… it’s Tinkerbell, and it’s cute fairies on Treehouse TV. They are that, but they’re also spirits. Puck is a goblin. They’re mischievous, and they can sometimes be dark.”

Always interesting, and still relevant over 400 years later

That dark whimsy that is entirely unlike any of Shakespeare’s other works has made it an enduring and engaging play for audiences.

“There are plenty of reasons why A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays. Written at the height of Shakespeare’s powers as a romantic poet, this play adds layers of fantasy and comedy with an ease that is really remarkable when you consider that nothing quite like it had ever been written before,” said Richard Beaune, The Shakespeare Company’s Artistic Producer. 

“Nothing quite like it has ever been written since.”

Jenkins said that the way Midsummer moves between the stories of Oberon and Titania’s conflict, to the madcap antics of the actors within the play The Mechanicals, to the romantic comedy of the exiled Athenians Hermia and Lysander.

“The ease with which the play leaps across styles and genres is a marvel to hear, and when you give it to a great team of actors, directors and designers, like the ones we’ve assembled for this production, you can expect a play that will lift off the stage,” he said.

Jenkins said that stage design will offer audiences something they also haven’t seen during a Midsummer performance—but he didn’t want to spoil the surprise, just saying that it would be full of action.

“There’s lots of action in this play, there’s lots of hijinx, lots fights, these almost fights. So we’re trying to lean into that,” Jenkins said.

“We’re throwing the theatre at a show at the play.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs at the Vertigo Studio Theatre from May 17 to June 1.

Tickets are available at https://tickets.vertigotheatre.com/TheatreManager.

The production stars Stephanie Bessala, Michael Rolfe, Ali Grams, Bernardo Pacheco, Kit Benz, Helen Knight, Joel David Taylor, Nikko Hinayo, Omar Javaid, Annisha Plesche, Joel Cochrane, Daniela Vlaskalic, and Tyrell Crews.

Directed by Ron Jenkins, with fight and intimacy direction by Brianna Johnston, voice coaching by Jane McFarlane, set design by Anton DeGroot, lighting design by Narda McCarroll, sound design by Greg Wilson, costume designs by Ralamy Kneeshaw, stage management by Niamh McCallion, and production management by Adam Kostiuk.