REVIEW | A Midsummer Night’s Dream
The Bay Area Limelight reviewed our production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on their August 25, 2026 blog posting: Link to Review. Here are a few quotes from the review.
What better time than the close of summer to perform Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. And what better place than the John Hinkel Park Amphitheater in the hills of Berkeley.
In this natural beauty, blooming relationships of young lovers become jumbled as they encounter a forest full of fairies led by the bickering King Oberon and Queen Titania of the fairies, played by Arcady Eugene and Cynthia Lagodzinski respectively.
Puck, talented Linda Maria Girón, leads the merry band of prankster fairies through the forest with music and story-telling.
In their fairydust-addled state, four lovers, AnneJelika Ong Cortez as Hermia, Nic Moore as Lysander, Parker Soughers as Demetrius, and Tina Traboulsi as Helena, pursue each other through the forest with hysterical physical antics. Tina Traboulsi’s Helena is so besotted by Demetrius she attaches herself to his legs as he drags her across the forest floor.
Bottom, delightfully played by Bruce Kaplan, is the perfect fool. His overblown idea of his own talent makes his metamorphosis into an ass, complete with braying voice, believable. In the play-within-the-play, a staging of Pyramus and Thisbe’s romance, Kaplan is a stand out. The slap stick death scenes are particularly hilarious.
