Picture this. A boy likes a girl but she doesn’t like him, while another girl (not the first) likes the boy but without receiving anything from him in return. Meanwhile, another boy (not the first) likes the first girl, until in enchantment he briefly makes a detour towards the second girl, who spurns him and instead ends with the boy she herself likes (the first one, not the second). Confused yet?
If not, you’ve got the main plot framework for ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ put on recently by Park High Theater.
Holding court at Park High Auditorium from Oct. 25 to Oct. 27, A Midsummer Night’s Dream starts of all places, in a palace.
Opening at Athens in the palace of Duke Theseus (Montague Ziegelmann), the play follows four main characters: Helena (Charity Lankow), Demetrius (Nathan Kinney), Hermia (Sasha McCauley), and Lysander (Griffin Tima), as they work out relationships, both with others and each other.
The plot kicks off as Theseus and Hippotyta Queen of the Amazons (Linnea Ross) are about to wed, Theseus holding an audience with Hermia’s dad Egeus (Connor Dahlquist), in Theseus agrees that Hermia must marry Demetrius, whom she scorns.
Meanwhile a girl named Helena also likes Demetrius (who once liked her) but can’t win him over. Instead he fancies Hermia, while Hermia herself fancies Lysander and can’t stand Demetrius.
Hermia left despondent at the de facto forced marriage to Demetrius lest she fall to the “Law of Athens,” Lysander promises to take her away to his aunt’s where the “law of Athens” doesn’t apply. To hatch the plot Lysander and Hermia are going to meet up at night in a nearby wood to elope—a wood that, unbeknownst to them, is enchanted. Helena catches wind of the plans and endeavors to tip off Demetrius in order to win him over, but the characters all fall asleep and when they awake, something’s gone wrong.
Awakened from sleep in the wood a seemingly changed man, Lysander suddenly likes Helena and can’t stand Hermia, while Demetrius also likes Helena, making Hermia jealous. The scorned as such becomes desired and the desired scorned, but lest readers worry, it all works out in the end. It turns out there’s a Fairy King named Oberon (Brody Owen) and Fairy Queen Titania (Knives Schmotter) involved in the mischief, along with a Fairy named Puck, or Robin Goodfellow (Evie Rumpza) who mistakes Lysander for Demetrius and causes the mischief in the first place.
Explaining the discord, the Fairy King Oberon had undertaken to have a flower juice enchantment placed by Demetrius, but this being misplaced by Puck near Lysander instead, meant that Lysander awoke to fall in love with Helena, with the above mentioned results. The Fairy King upon learning this rages at Puck that the mess up must be resolved, while the Fairy Queen lulled to sleep becomes enamored for a short time, of a beast, also part of a plot by the Fairy King, but for different purpose.
With Queen Titiana later freed of this attachment, the play follows along as the characters of Hermia, Hellena, Lysander, and Demetrius find their way to happiness, disentangled from and thus no longer at odds with one another.
The key, as resolved by Puck, is to reverse the enchantment in Lysander so that he returns to Hermia while Demetrius’ affection for Hellena is rekindled, leaving all involved happy.
Mere mortals and not realizing the involvement of fairies in their predicament, the four resolve their differences happily. As Shakespeare wrote elsewhere, “all’s well that ends well”—at least, we hope.