A Midsummer Night's Dream, Weird Sisters Theatre Collective at Center Stage on Real, August 18 - 27

by Michael Meigs

Once a year, a theatre production of the Weird Sisters Collective briefly appears like a friendly comet in the Austin evenings. Like comets, they're "wanderers," at least in recent years -- you need to be alert for news of them each July or August, because the venues for their productions have changed from year to year.

They had planned to do the Jacobean drama The Roaring Girl by Dekker and Middleton, under the guidance of their friend Dr. Lizz Ketterer, but Ketterer's unexpected death in February left them adrift. They turned to comfort theatre -- Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, one of those reliable pieces that, as Robert Faires of the Austin Chronicle once commented, comes around on Austin stages with the regularity of clockwork.

Faires' observation was accurate. A Midsummer Night's Dream is familiar and beloved for its airy fantasy and good-hearted mockery of the predicaments of love. We all enjoy white magic, whether it involves transformation of brash tradesman Bottom into an ass or transformation of love-besotted young persons into fools. Plus, it's the shortest of Shakespeare's plays.

Read more at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .