Performed in repertory, the well-loved comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the rarely produced The Two Noble Kinsmen interrogate what lengths we will go to for love and what happens to those who get left behind. Both stories take place in the realm of Theseus, who has to decide how to manage young men rivaling for the attentions of a single woman.
Anacostia Arts Center
1231 Good Hope Road, SE Washington, DC 20020
Cast
Jenna Berk
Ian Blackwell Rogers
Joshua D. Brown
Jacqueline Chenault
Kelly Elliott
Renana Fox
Amber Gibson
Carolyn Kashner
Willem Krumich
Ben Lauer
David Mavricos
Zach Roberts
Anderson Wells
Production Team
Charlene V. Smith Director Derek David Stage Manager Melissa Huggins Costume Designer
Genevieve V. Beller Masks & Puppetry Jason Aufdem-Brinke Lighting Designer Joshua D. Brown & Kelly Elliott Fight Choreographers
Zach Roberts Music Director & Composer Jacqueline Chenault Dance Choreographer
Both productions turn out to be delightfully comic, particularly – wait for it – The Two Noble Kinsmen. It is a play so rarely staged that the fact Brave Spirits is mounting it would be reason enough for DC-area Shakespeare geeks to see it; the fact that it is staged so intelligently and acted so deftly is reason for everybody else to check it out, too.
Eric Minton, Shakespeareances.com
Director Charlene V. Smith sensitively charges Kinsmen with gender insight into the play’s men and women alike. … Smith is especially strong with the women, from the robbed-of-power, pleading queens of the opening scene, to Hippolyta’s solidarity with them, to Emilia’s doubts and pressure from the complex role she has in the men’s conflict and survival, to a subplot involving an unnamed Jailer’s Daughter (Jenna Berk) … Berk is often very funny, always deeply sensitive, and full of a magnetic stage presence. Her story flies forward, barreling towards its inevitable conclusion, and you never doubt for a second the complex arc of emotions played out by Berk, or the confidence with which Smith uses the storyline thematically.
John Dellaporta, DC Theatre Scene
Kinsmen becomes an actors’ showcase. Mavricos and Willem Krumich, as the cousins Arcite and Palamon, form a terrific display of male bonding. … Better still is Jenna Berk, playing the jailer’s daughter, who frees Palamon out of love but is driven insane when he refuses to return her affections.
