The Citadel A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical offers a vintage twist on the bard

Shakespeare sure knew how to write a romcom.

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The bard of Avon probably hit his apex in the genre with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, not only dropping a tangle of would-be young paramours in a web of steamy desire but sneaking in a magical love potion as well. Hermia has the hots for Lysander, Demetrius is in love with Hermia. Then there’s Helena, who has a thing for Demetrius. If you wanted to update the premise, what would you add? Why, a sexy soundtrack full of grooving radio hits from the Me Decade, of course.

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“It’s been a pretty fun job,” admits Daryl Cloran, director and co-adaptor with Kayvon Khoshkam of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. “Once we decided that this was going to be the ‘70s we spent a couple of months listening to every hit from that period possible. Then you’d think, ‘How can this replace a monologue? Can it do the same job?’ Because the last thing we wanted was for it to be pausing the story to listen to our favourite song, and then we pick up again. The songs need to keep the character journey going and do the same job that the text did.”

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Genres play a big part in differentiating the characters in the production, which starts Saturday and runs until March 23 at the Citadel. Cloran describes Oberon, the king of fairies, as a kind of a 1970s hard rocker, whereas his queen Titania grooves along with R’n’B and disco. Sections of the dialogue are snipped so that a funky number can express emotion, as when Hermia and Lysander duet on Stevie Wonder’s For Once in My Life.

Cloran is directing a nearly all-local cast for this one. For the core cast of human lovers, he’s got Alexandra Dawkins as Hermia, Rochelle Laplante playing Lysander, Chirag Naik as Demetrius, and Christina Nguyen in the role of Helena. The woodland fairy royal family is represented by Jameela McNeil as Titania and Charlie Gallant as Oberon, with Luc Tellier playing the chaos sprite Puck. Shoutout to a double-duty team of players including Ruth Alexander (Quince), Oscar Derkx (Francis Flute), and Taylor Fawcett (Snout), who are often playing instruments as much as declaiming lines.

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“They really get to show off their chops,” says Cloran. “It’s really satisfying in the moment when they transition from the Shakespearean text and start into a song, and you feel the audience go ‘oh, I know this.’ That’s a really great feeling.”

You can debate all you want whether Shakespeare would be appalled at words being removed from his plays, but the playwright knew what his crowd wanted. If he was writing for a large audience today there’s a high probability he would’ve acknowledged a concise Motown tune as a quick way to get a point across about young adults finding love and running off together. As Cloran notes, Shakespeare’s work can often be quite musical.

“Specifically Midsummer Night’s Dream, which has a few places in it with songs,” he says. “Then there’s his writing, which is so lyrical, and because it’s so sort of magical and fantastical there’s lots of room for songs.”

Cloran already has a reputation for matching Shakespeare with music. In 2016 he brought Love’s Labour’s Lost to Vancouver’s Bard on the Beach as a kind of 1920’s jazz musical, sneaking in such classics as Ain’t Misbehavin’, Night and Day, and Paper Moon in the process. The Beatles were plundered for tunes in 2018 when he reconfigured As You Like It as a swinging ‘60s idyll in the Okanogan Valley in the ‘60s, with pro wrestling thrown in for good measure.

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As You Like It was something of a smash, and as of this year has gone through nine different productions across Canada and down to Chicago and Washington. According to Cloran, responses from the audience are that it’s a great gateway into Shakespeare for people who aren’t used to Shakespeare because it helps with the language. Also, it’s just plain fun for an audience.

That applies to Cloran as well. For the director, one of the best parts of envisioning a new approach to Shakespeare is incorporating a musical genre into the action and seeing how the actors respond.

“They not only have to be great with Shakespearean texts, they have to be great singers and dancers as well,” he says “Some of them also have to be great musicians. It can be such a tour de force to watch performers do this kind of work. It’s all of the best things about theatre to watch something like this come together.”

Of course, it’s not as easy as identifying a song that will do the work of a soliloquy and then simply plopping it in. Oh no, there are rules to these kinds of things. First up, there’s the matter of clearances, getting the artists in question to okay the use of their song in a production. Not every song from Cloran Khoshkam’s initial wish list made it in.

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“Surprisingly for us, one of the biggest challenges was with some of the harder rock tunes. A few of those bands were not into it, or at least the people who the request went to weren’t into it. Often it never actually makes it to the band, right? So, there were a few songs like that, but for the most part it worked out really well and we’ve got some excellent music to work with. Certainly one of the goals with this production is for audiences to have a lot of fun and to leave singing one or two of them.”

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical

Adapted by Daryl Cloran and Kayvon Khoshkam

Director: Daryl Cloran

When: Saturday until March 23. Evening shows are at 7:30 p.m., matinees are at 1:30 p.m.

Where: MacLab Theatre at the Citadel Theatre, 9828 101A Ave.

Tickets: $40 and up, available in advance from citadeltheatre.com

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