Puck, Is Oberon In Love?

My introduction to puck was a high school classmate who played that role in our class presentation of the Midsummer Night's Dream back in 1978. N, my classmate who played Puck was a riot in the library where we presented the play. But I don't remember Oberon, King of the faeries. It was only when I saw the film with Rupert Everett as Oberon(1999) that I gained complete acquaintance with Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream. The movie version logged in my memory, which meant that I liked that movie very much.In order to share my enjoyment with my nieces, I bought a Children's book edition of the play and gave it to them as a gift. That was back when they still donned their elementary uniforms.

Kristine and Pauline, my nieces, are into their last years of college today. They were with me when I watched "Shakespeare in London" last March 31 live on stage, at the Greenbelt Theater. As the play progressed I was happy that the two young ladies recalled Oberon and Puck, and knew exactly where these comic characters were coming from. They kept going back to their book, recalling the clowns and piecing the story. As a result, all three of us gleefully ventured with Puck and Oberon on stage, as if we had also gotten lost and realized that we're far removed from the Magical eden of Shakespeare's fictional forest. We found ourselves thrust into the hazy, futuristic milieu of the stars. Incidentally, there was some similar magic operating in the setting where we materialized. But we were as puzzled as Puck and Oberon when they landed in the magical world of Hollywood in one wrong turn.

This layering in the play - characters from a Shakespeare play playing themselves in a play by Shakespeare starring Hollywood stars who play Shakespeare's characters in a play about Hollywood-movie-in-the-making (pause), left an impression on my nieces. How magical! Indeed, magic was the motif and illusion that kept the two rooted on their seats - they, who are used to speaking in acronyms on their cell phones via email, facebook and twitter. They were quite taken with the play, laughing and mimicking the characters a long time after we've left the theater. They especially adored Chris Villongco's character, that of sexy star who went out of her way to get the part of Helena when she got hold of the Shakespeare script. She was tired of her 'sexy' packaging and was determined to play more demanding roles such as that of "Madame Curie".

Memorable is how in one scene, Chris, in wishing the director to modify her scene, spoke Helena's lines "back to front" in a stilted, high-pitched, Southern American Accent. She did this to convince her director that forwards or backwards Shakespeare's lines "don't make no sense!" Another punchline was when she declared near the end of the play after successfully playing Helena, that she would like to do another Shakespeare character in a movie. Seductively, she paused and pouted and said, "I'd like to do another movie by Shakespeare, and it is called - "War and Peace". At this, the audience burst into laughter.

However much the Shakespeare lines made no sense, my two young companions enjoyed "Shakespeare in London" very much and wildly applauded the actors. (One has begun to nurture a crush on one of the handsome players.) The long musical verses from Shakespeare's immortal creations (some lines came from The Tempest, some, from Romeo and Juliet) did not at all sound greek. In fact, the other side to this serious comedy is its sarcasm towards Hollywood and all that it represents. While most of the stars of Hollywood fade as soon as they lose media attention, Shakespeare's characters have endured up to the post-modernist literary times and on to this era of text messaging.

Pauline and Kristine enjoyed the English poet's lines even if "they didn't make any sense". They laughed at the antics of the moving caricatures on stage whose fictional fates took one wrong turn after another, because Puck, Oberon's mischievous yet loveable side-kick, "ran loose with a flower which caused people to fall in love with the first thing they saw upon waking."

Another plus is that the play was basically a love story. Where there was love, there was magic. Where there was Oberon, king of the fairies, there should be that instant magical connection between desperate lovers. But flippant Puck, turned all these blessed magic into curse. And this time, Oberon was the victim, since this King of the faeries had fallen in love with a struggling mortal actress playing Hermia.

Among our favorite scenes, the entry of the censor played by Miguel Faustman tops them all. Clearly the thespian that he is, he had us as soon as he entered the stage in an effeminate manner. His delivery was completely in character, and you will not mistake that delivery for any other, but that of that censor's. That is, if we had closed our eyes and heard only his voice, we still would have felt his unhappy, myopic view of life turned more acutely myopic by his desperate desire for control in a world where all credits go to the stars. He was so effective that we were sort of sad for him when Oberon turned him into a donkey, which, actually, he deserved.

When we left the theater, the three of us were an inch taller at knowing some things that account for great feats. Repertory did it again, made us smile and believe entertainment can always go a knot higher. Kristine and Pauline and myself - we will not forget this shared experience.