A Midsummer Night's Dream(2)

The staging also provided lots of sound and light, including a lovely series of flowers-in-bloom projected onto the rear stage during Bottom's erotic fantasia in Titania's bower, but the less illusionistic moments-the moments in which the visible presence of stage business reminded the audience that theater is a symbolic, not a realistic, medium-seemed most affecting to me. The costume design was striking, in particular that which underlined the dark presence of shirtless David Harewood, who played Oberon in heavy body paint, opposite the almost translucent Tina Benko as Titania. In their opening moment on stage, when they used their chainsaws to cut away Puck's bed and let the spirit ascend in the balloon-parachute of dreaming, they performed physical labor in support of the imagination.