A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1992)

THE STORY

It has been recommended to Hermia, secretary to a mafioso godfather, Duke Theseus, that she marry Demetrius, a scion of the clan, but she prefers to run away with her childhood sweetheart, Lysander, a poet. They intend to cross the park, from East Side to West Side, by night, but reckon without Helena who is in love with Demetrius herself and has told him of Hermia’s elopement.

The lovers enter the park, ignorant of the existence of the Night People who rule it after dark. Tytania has refused Oberon access to her Indian love-boy, and their extremes of sensual passion have turned the world upside down. Oberon commissions Puck to deal with the situation which is complicated by the presence of a deal with the situation which is complicated by the presence of a entertainment for Theseus’s wedding privately in the forest.

Dawn breaks as Tytania wakes again to fall in love again with Oberon, the Indian boy forgotten; the lovers wake to find themselves more deeply in love with the right partners; and Bottom awakes to find his delirious night with Tytania has — perhaps — only been a midsummer night’s dream.

Theseus decides to celebrate his marriage to Hippolyta, ruler of another clan, in the park itself. Quince provides his neo-modernist production of “Pyramus and Thisbe,” starring Bottom and Flute as the tragicomic lovers—an object lesson to the three happy couples in their audience.

And the Night People have the last word.