Love may be blind in an era of 90-day fiancés, but at least Titania has an otherworldly excuse for why she’s cuddled up in a flowery bed with a genuine jackass.
She’s under the spell of a magic flower that causes her to fall in love for the first thing she sees. And if that creature has hooves, a prominent overbite and comically suppressed braying, then charge it all to the quirks of the heart.
Titania (Regina Marie Williams) and fool-turned-donkey Nick Bottom (Remy Auberjonois) are but hilarious fairy pawns in Joseph Haj’s verdant “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which opened Thursday at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis.
Haj’s staging of Shakespeare’s reverie on the wages and whims of love is a splendid delight. Its lush visual design is matched by a soundscape that’s just as varied and whose mood is enhanced by composer and multi-instrumentalist Jack Herrick’s live cinema-style accompaniment.
The pacing of this “Midsummer” is languid, a directorial choice that’s not just because of the tempo of Herrick’s escapist idylls and the fact that the actors deliver Shakespeare’s language with understanding and clarity (bravo). It’s as if Haj, at a time of anxiety, impatience and fear, is inviting us to luxuriate in this diverting world and reset for a magical spell.

“Midsummer” boasts winning performances by the physically gifted Auberjonois, the elegant Williams, Aimee K. Bryant as a singing Tom Snout, John Catron as lord of the shadows Oberon, and Jimmy Kieffer as a towering, NBA-ready Puck. Those are some of the evening’s well-established players whose routine excellence makes their work look easy.
What’s great about the Guthrie’s eighth “Midsummer” since its 1963 founding is that it also introduces us to some impressive new talent. Newcomer-to-Minnesota Royer Bockus plays ukulele and serves as a kind of welcoming emcee for the proceedings. She does skillful interactive work with the audience, eliciting love stories.
Styled by costume designer and scenic designer Lex Liang as a tall, flightless bird who takes loping steps across the stage, Bockus also plays Helena, one of the quartet of raring young lovers whose hormones have been confused by the fairies. The other youthful lovers are Ari Derambakhsh, who stuns as Hermia; Justin Withers, who delivers a lyrical and limber turn as Demetrius; and Jonathan Luke Stevens as suave Lysander. They make the Guthrie stage a site of vital merriment.