New York City Ballet: Midsummer comes early, uneven yet thrilling

It was way past their bedtimes but the main stars of New York City Ballet’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream did manage a brief nap onstage in Act 1 on opening night. In George Balanchine’s uneven yet enchanting take on Shakespeare, two dozen children from the School of American Ballet, costumed as butterflies and bugs, attempt to bridge the human and fairy worlds. They dart around delightfully, carpeting Oberon’s domain as he sails – or in the case of Roman Mejia, hurtles – around the enchanted forest. 

They show up for the brokenhearted Helena (the terrific Isabella LaFreniere), encircling her and fluttering their hands at her, then collapse in a heap for their nap. And at the end of the ballet, they join Puck (the inspired and hilarious Taylor Stanley) in restoring the fairy kingdom to rights before daybreak, amid a flurry of fireflies and the crisp, haunting sonorities of Musica Sacra. Balanchine didn’t just have them run around and flap their arms: he gave the tiny people bourrées and other classical steps, in a kaleidoscope of formations, which they nailed, with a commitment that was occasionally lacking among their adult counterparts in the Act 2 ensemble. 

Stanley soared above the shtick that sometimes afflicts portrayals of Puck; neither groveling nor camp, he took his job as Oberon’s lieutenant seriously. Witty, dry, with a knife-edge to his skimming leaps, and an engaging tendency not to dwell on his screw-ups but to expedite the repairs. The comic scene in which he chases the hapless Demetrius and Lysander (Jules Mabie and Harrison Coll) and engages them in swordplay in an effort to keep them from murdering each other is pure gold; with his physical grace and intensity, he keeps the mayhem from descending into slapstick.

Other standouts on opening night did not play up the physical comedy but allowed the steps to convey a torrent of emotions. Like LaFreniere, whose vivid lines in arabesque piqué and grand jeté, conveyed Helena’s anguish and bewilderment at her involuntary transformation from spurned to ‘it girl’. Ashley Laracey in the opposite predicament sprang onto brittle pointes, finished her low-flying leaps with an apprehensive twist of the torso, and rushed around with her arms beautifully tangled in her hair. 

Sara Mearns’ Titania was all sweeping extensions, daredevil off-balance tilts, explosive jumps and chaîné turns whose velocity practically ensured vertical take off. Her dalliance with a nameless cavalier danced by Peter Walker started out precariously but finished with some exhilarating lifts. His solo work was expansive and clean; her développés wild in the ascent, controlled in the descent. Mearns also displayed comic finesse in her funny and poignant duet with Nick Bottom, the traveling player whom Puck magicked into a donkey (Preston Chamblee, in a perfectly understated performance.) Yet she made the most indelible impression in a display of sisterhood with her fairy retinue, who moved through poses rather like the women of mystery painted by the Pre-Raphaelites. 

Titania asserted herself as an equal to Oberon yet their depictions on opening night couldn’t have been more mismatched. No man of mystery, nor a glitteringly imperious ruler, Mejia’s Oberon was exuberant and war-like, almost cartoonish in intensity. He attacked his allegro with such force that he sometimes distorted his line in the air, or landed with a thud. Mejia did make a great comic duo with Stanley, Oberon's exasperation with Puck tinged with affection. 

Maddeningly disjointed, this Midsummer appends a full-on wedding divertissement to Shakespeare’s supernatural tale. In Act 2, Tiler Peck and Tyler Angle pop out of nowhere in Shakespeare to manifest a refined, restrained vision of the civilizing influence of love, to the adagio from Mendelssohn’s ninth symphony. (Though we must first endure the longueurs of a court scene where nothing much happens, rather like the opening of Diamonds.) Peck and Angle conquered the long floaty phrases rife with balance and promenade challenges, and slow supported jumps in which her legs beat softly or scissor gently before touching down. His focus on her was tender; her trust in him complete. The audience sniffled audibly. 

A perhaps more realistic image of romance was embodied by the splendid Naomi Corti as Hippolyta, affianced to Theseus, Duke of Athens (Owen Flacke, in his debut.) Hippolyta made the most of her last days of singlehood, bowhunting in the forest in a splendid orange cape, hounds at her feet. She unleashed powerful jumps and whipping turns – as if asserting the primacy of humanity over the chaotic fairy realm, and of classical form over nebulous devices like flowers with pharmaceutical powers. When Theseus lifts her, she flutters her feet, as if expressing a desire to cut loose and fly off.