Since the “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” debacle, Julie Taymor’s been keeping a low profile. She licked her wounds, and moved on to a new directing project — a production of Shakespeare’s supernatural comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that’s so off-Broadway, it’s in Brooklyn.
This tremendous, magical new show is doing the talking for her. And what it basically says is: “Screw you, haters!” Just, you know, a lot more gently.
Pulling out every last theatrical trick — puppets, projections, shadows, acrobatics, dance and, yes, flying — Taymor reminds us why she’s been hailed as a stage innovator for the past 25 years, Bono be damned.
With its fairies, love potions and fantastical shenanigans, “Midsummer” is almost too obvious a fit for her.
Yet there’s nothing boilerplate in this Theatre for a New Audience presentation — which inaugurates the company’s newly built, state-of-the-art venue, half a block from BAM. Every minute brings new surprising ravishments, starting with the jaw-dropping opening scene in which Puck (Kathryn Hunter) is whisked upward on soaring tree roots.
Julie TaymorBy the end of the show, we feel as if we’ve been enchanted along with the characters.
Taymor makes great use of props, lighting and Elliot Goldenthal’s original score to evoke the play’s three distinct domains.
Best is the otherworldly dimension in which dwell King of Shadows Oberon (David Harewood, the late FBI director on “Homeland”) and his wife, Titania, the Fairy Queen (Tina Benko, channeling Tilda Swinton).
The ferociously charismatic duo have a strong physical connection — his dark, muscular yin to her pale, lithe yang. But even they are eclipsed by Hunter’s Puck, a cheeky sprite of indeterminate gender and rubber limbs.
Earthier are the Rude Mechanicals, the amateur actors doing the play-within-the-play, who here become a group of New York tradesmen led by the blustery Nick Bottom (a very funny Max Casella, the original Timon in “The Lion King”).
The show’s only misstep is the forced antics of the charmless, clumsily acted love quartet. Their pillow fight is the only part of the nearly three-hour show that feels interminable.
It’s a forgivable glitch in this fabulous evening.
One of Taymor’s many great ideas is to have kids, which she nicknames the Rude Elementals, play the sprites and fairies.
It’s a fitting choice for a show that creates such childlike wonder.