"A Midsummer Night's Dream" Long Beach City College, Long Beach, CA

I think with this particular staging of William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Long Beach City College director Anthony Carreiro’s intention was to make the play (not to mention live theatre itself), and Shakespeare (as if he needed it), not just relevant and necessary but alive and fulfilling. He does, in spades.

With his staging, though, I think Carreiro sacrifices narrative (that magical language) for spectacle and thus loses a successful balance of audio and visual that would drive the story forward. Though commendable in themselves, I think the effects clash with and distract from the narrative, It’s hard to single out any one performance because the stage submerges the actors.

I have always liked the story. It provides perfectly plausible (to me) explanations for the hyena vagaries of love that vex, hex, and perplex us. It was the invisible fairies of the forest with their love-juice.

The story abounds with the Bard’s wonderful plot complications, improbable situations, and memorable characters.

There are hilarious plays-within-a-play. Let partisans chortle that John Falstaff is their favorite Shakespearean funnyman, I’ll take Nick Bottom (J. Pablo Hernandez) any day.

I applaud Carreiro’s ambitious attempt (visually, musically) to visualize the story as a hybrid Woodstock meets Cats. Indeed, the first part ends with The Beatles’ “Golden Slumbers.” Costume-wise it’s like Patrick McGee of the Avengers meets John Lennon of Magical Mystery Tour.

Hermia (Kaylee Bouwens) is a flower child. With his floral print shirt, striped pants, and sandals, Lysander (Kyle Ruebel) could appear on an iPod billboard. Theseus, Demetrius (Nathan Ayling), and Egeus (Josh Vega), Hermia’s father, look like they’re the PC guys in the Apple commercials.

The visual distinction between generations, between Us and Them, between laid back Lysander and uptight Demetrius is keen, if not obvious. The stage is filled to the rafters with well-designed and –engineered sets that ground us in urban Athens or murky forests.

I suspect it was the conflation of styles is what drew the many and constant laughs from the audience. True, it was funny to see Shakespeare resurrected in the Summer of Love (free love, magic dust, merry pranksters prancing about).

The production has lots of energy. It entertains us with many Oohs and Ahhs. But the pieces, pretty though they may be, don’t gel. There’s no consistent look, feel, tenor, of the production. There’s a disconnect between form and content and nothing I could discern (irony, for example) can explain it.

The only thing that holds the show together is spectacle. In the final analysis, what’s left is something more big than refined, more blustery than eloquent.

See it nonetheless for the carnival atmosphere (on stage, in the audience), for some very funny moments (ditto), and for an incisive always-relevant vivisection of that crazy little thing called love.

Performances are 8pm, Thu. – Sat., 2pm, Sun. The play runs until Apr. 20. Tickets are $7 & 10. The Auditorium is located on the LBCC campus, on Harvey Way between Clark and Faculty Avenue. For more info call 938-4569 or visit www.lbcc.edu/tdf.