"A Midsummer Night's Dream" in Midsummer at the Old Globe

"Afrofuturism" is not achieved simply by casting black actors in lead roles, something that should have happened decades ago—the Globe did that in 2013 in “Dream” and elsewhere in its prior productions. The Globe’s new production of the all-time favorite, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is lapped about with essays invoking Marvel comics and movies, Comic-Con, and the term Afrofuturism in its (largely successful) aim of modern relevance.

The Globe program essay credits Mark Dery (1959- ; White) with inventing the term—but he doubtless leans on the work of renowned Black scholar, Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986), born in Senegal, and his seminal 1974 book, The African Origin of Civilization: Myth or Realty, an analysis that exploded the division between ancient Egyptian culture and the rest of the continent. It was okay to pay homage to Egypt, but not to the rest of the “dark continent,” always prey to the evils of European colonialism and centuries of slavery, the latter holding down and back entire populations.

In other words, Dery is heir to Diop, who wrote, “The history of Black Africa will remain suspended in air and cannot be written correctly until African historians dare to connect it with the history of Egypt.”

No less than the Metropolitan Museum of Art has mounted a terrific Afrofuturism exhibit on view now and has taken Diop’s title for its current spring 2022 bulletin. This groundbreaking effort by a major cultural institution is followed by the Old Globe, which has twice brought in the gifted Patricia McGregor, new artistic director of the New York Theatre Workshop, and a former Globe resident artist, to direct “Dream.”

McGregor first mounted an abbreviated “Dream” for the theatre’s touring arm, Globe For All, in 2018, but her connection to a play she loves extends back to age 13. She does not kneel at the shrine of Shakespeare, but feels free to add dialogue, jokes, a cell phone, boom box, laptop, a textbook, “Shakespeare for Dummies”, and asides to the audience in her wonderful, imaginative production that uses the whole theatre. Her staging of the play-within-a-play, Pyramus and Thisbe, is the funniest ever and reduced the packed house to shouts of laughter. The cast’s enjoyment was infectious.

We especially liked Miki Vale’s original music and commentary; Melanie Chen Cole’s sound; Steven Strawbridge’s lighting; and David Israel Reynoso’s thrift shop-inspired costumes—though for fairy royalty he goes for spectacular headdresses and robes, with Titania in a sequin-encrusted, serpentine bodysuit. Reynoso also delivers spectacular set pieces: a bank of white clouds, a huge portrait of an African queen, and a globe of Planet Earth lit from within and backed by a thin, lit outline of the moon.

McGregor welded her diverse cast into a single ensemble. Along the way she largely jettisons the play, which is subsumed by the political intent of the production. The cast cannot speak verse and is often difficult to understand despite their virtuosic stage movement and obvious enjoyment. A case in point is Christopher Michael Rivera as Puck, a lanky six-footer garbed in a lizard green bodysuit and capped with an immense lime green mohawk. As the glue that holds the plot together, he needs vocal coaching, especially on his closing speech. Similarly, many of the women have shrieky soprano voices and need coaching.

The lithe Paul James, vocally the best as Oberon, King of the Fairies, is well matched by the gorgeous Karen Aldridge as Titania, whose contralto pipes and get-over-it attitude are regal redefined. Celeste Arias as Helena and Jamie Ann Romero as her rival Hermia (“I’m SHORT!”) are touching and hilarious by turns. Brett Cassidy as Theseus turns a static role into an appealing husband of Hippolyta, played dashingly by Camilla Leonard.

The flock of fairies and the entire “Pyramus” troupe are delightful. But we single out the amusing Jake Millgard as Pyramus/Bottom for special praise. Side note: We never see the beautiful little boy adopted by Titania and coveted by Oberon. He was probably Black when Blackness wasn’t cool.

The Globe both mounts and imports diverse productions to prove, if proof were needed, that it offers “theatre that matters.” The Dream closes Sept. 4. Run, don’t walk.

P. S. by the way, “Shakespeare” was the pseudonym of Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford, whose brilliance was well known in his lifetime. By contrast, “Shaksper,” the actual name of the semi-literate businessman from Stratford, now a hokey theme park, never wrote a line in his life. Should we care? Yes, if you value credit-where-credit-is-due.