Chris (the hubby) and I went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream in Delaware Park yesterday evening (for those not from the Buffalo, NY area, Shakespeare in the Park is an organization that performs plays in Buffalo's Delaware Park every summer). We'd been before a couple of times, but hadn't made it in the past few years, and Midsummer's... is one of my favorite plays (right up there with Macbeth and The Tempest), so I especially wanted to go this season.

We had a grand time -- we got there almost an hour early, so we had a better choice of parking and seating than we have in previous years. We were under a great big oak tree that provided shade and protection from the drizzle that started during Act II.

The play was very good. The costumes were really neat, and I got to get a closer look at some of them when the actors came up the hill to pass the hat during the intermission (donations help a lot). Puck wore a motley of purple and orange, and had a scooter to ride around on; Hermia had a green velvet (?) number that would have looked good at an SCA event or Renfaire, Titania's attendants wore these really pretty green low-cut gauzy dresses with little wings on their backs, and Helena had this really pretty royal blue satin (?) number on. Bottom had a sort of loud outfit -- plaid slops (?) (I think that's the term for those blousy knicker-things -- roisnoir would know better than I, probably...) and these funny pom-pom things on his doublet. This company went for the Kevin Kline-ish ass-Bottom look (a sort of hat with donkey ears) rather than the full-head mask I've seen elsewhere.

The stage hands doubled as extras, and there were a number of "improv" scenes that were really funny ("Oh, yeah, put [the tree stumps] together...that'll look natural..." said the actor playing Oberon when he "discovered" there were no tree stump props for the scene between him and Puck).

Kind of amusing to see that even in the Bard's time, flowers and candy were used to win a lady's affections (Aegeus mentions to Theseus that Lysander used "nosegays...and sweetmeats..." to woo Hermia...:-). I guess the tradition goes way back...;-)

(For another view of this event, see lostsatyr's LJ.)