"when the players are all dead, there need none to be blamed"

Last night I dragged the wife to Olympia High School's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. As high school theater goes, it was pretty darn good--fabulous sets and costumes, mostly decent line readings, and a show-stealing performance by Patrick Rayment as Nick Bottom.

Tonight, though, the wife is watching Michael Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream, perhaps to get back at me for making her suffer through amateur hour. Sadly, it's a tedious, despicable, melodramatic, soporific hack job that includes:

1. "Italian" characters speaking English (in either American or bad British accents), along with Italians speaking, of all things, Italian
2. Bicycles in starring roles (at least they don't act badly)
3. Rapid-fire, overly rhythmic line readings
4. Mud wrestling
5. A horrible mix of moods--comedy that isn't funny juxtaposed with romance that isn't romantic, followed by laughable tragedy and pedestrian magic.
6. A classic score, the only redeeming feature
7. Bare bottoms (and, worse, a bare Bottom)

Put in perspective, Oly's version is a triumph of adolescent genius.