Event Article

Lights! Camera! Shakespeare! Shakespeare?? Yes, something wonderful is afoot at the Fullerton College Theater Arts Department. You won't want to miss this one. Shakespeare arid 'the Golden Age of Hollywood unite in Chuck Ketter's imaginative rendering of the Bard's comedy, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." .

Mix-ups, mis-cues and mismatches abound as fairies sprinkle dust here and there, causing Cupid's arrows to fly amiss, with humorous results. If you like Shakespeare and you know the stars of Hollywood's Golden Age, you'll get the most out of the humor and irony of the play.If you've riot yet experienced much of the Bard, this play represents the perfect chance to test the waters. It's a lot of fun.

Department chairman Ketter has devised a plot twist that salutes the stars of Hollywood's heyday of the 30s and 40s The stars become the characters of the magical love farce that is, at once, both tribute and allegory. The original play twines reality and fantasy in such a way that they seem almost interchangeable.

Hollywood is famous for blurring those lines and seemed a natural for melding into Will's play about love and human foibles, according to Mr. Ketter.

The play, as written by Shakespeare, relates the· comic misadventures of three couples, two composed of humans and the third the union of fairies, with the action taking place just before another marriage - Duke of Athens to his beloved Hippolyta. And as a subplot, there is a play within a play, as a ragtag bunch of actors prepares a small production to be performed in honor of the Duke's wedding.

The play, as staged by Mr. Ketter, relates all of this through the lens of the Silver Screen. The big Hollywood stars of yesteryear become .the characters envisioned by Shakespeare-there's John Wayne as Oberon, king of ·the fairies, Joan Crawford as Titania, queen of the fairies, Charlie Chaplin as Puck, Oberon's lieutenant... and then there are the Three Stooges, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, Lucille Ball, and Laurel and Hardy. And all speak the original lines as penned by Shakespeare. That's high comedy in itself.

If you know who John Wayne and Joan Crawford are, you must surely be thinking that they are not exactly well matched. That's the point "Mistakes are made in the magic of making movies. The right people are not necessarily always paired with the right people" said Ketter. And since the.play is about the mis-pairing of lovers, Mr. Ketter decided to take it one step further and put together some unlikely pairs of stars within his play.

It works. I previewed the play during the first full run-through. Without make-up , costumes, lighting, or even a fully constructed set, I thought it was quite amusing. I, for one, can't wait to see it in full production. I've already bought my ticket and eagerly anticipate the chance to see it acted in full regalia.