By GUILHERME MELETTI YAZBEK
Before the curtain even rises at the Benedum Center, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream has already begun casting its spell. Soft blue light washes across the proscenium with the shimmering texture of moonlight reflected on water, gently absorbing the audience into Shakespeare’s enchanted world while the theater’s ornate architecture amplifies the sensation of entering a space suspended between dream and fable. Once the curtain opens, the production’s visual intelligence immediately becomes apparent. Rather than relying on excessive scenic transformations, the staging constructs its nocturnal forest through translucent layered surfaces, softly textured like foliage, that allow light and depth to continuously reshape the space. Throughout the evening, a luminous moon quietly reappears upstage behind these gauzy forest layers, producing moments of pure theatrical magic without ever tipping into visual excess. Two simple but remarkably effective scenic devices—a raised upstage passageway from which characters emerge and a cavern-like structure embedded beneath it—further enrich the stage architecture while preserving the production’s elegant balance of wonder and precision. Everything feels meticulously crafted, atmospheric, and deeply committed to theatrical enchantment rather than spectacle for its own sake.
If the production’s visual world establishes the evening’s spellbinding atmosphere, it is the predominantly female corps de ballet that fully animates it. Both acts open with the fairies and Puck, and the precision of these ensemble sections is consistently astonishing—not only a testament to the dancers themselves, but also to the often invisible labor of rehearsal direction—bravi, Steven Annegarn and Barbara Bears! Moving with remarkable synchronicity through flowing spatial compositions, the fairies seem to ripple across the stage like shifting currents of air. One hears the delicate sound of pointe shoes striking the floor, a detail that lends the choreography an added layer of physical immediacy and emotional resonance. Costume design further supports the production’s lucid theatricality: variations in color help guide the audience within Shakespeare’s constantly shifting romantic entanglements, remaining elegant and understated. The ballet’s masculine vocabulary often emphasizes buoyancy, propulsion, expansive spatial projection, and repeated tours en l’air that remain vividly imprinted in memory long after the curtain falls. No performer embodies this expansive physicality more compellingly than Emry Amoky, whose magnetic Puck tears through the stage with extraordinary charisma, ultimately emerging as the evening’s undeniable center of gravity. Bravo!
If Amoky’s Puck functions as the production’s kinetic engine, much of the ballet’s emotional and comic pleasure emerges through the tangled romantic confusions he sets into motion. Ben Stevenson’s choreography does not attempt to translate every narrative detail of Shakespeare’s play with literal precision; instead, it distills emotional states—desire, jealousy, tenderness, frustration, intoxication—into movement, gesture, rhythm, and theatrical atmosphere. Even spectators unfamiliar with the intricacies of the original text can easily grasp the production’s shifting emotional constellations. Among the evening’s many comic highlights, the tumultuous dynamic between Helena and Demetrius proves especially memorable. Grace Rookstool delivers a magnificent comic performance, navigating exaggerated frustration and romantic desperation with impeccable timing and expressive clarity. Elsewhere, the drunken villagers’ scenes offer an especially delightful rupture within the ballet’s otherwise elongated classical vocabulary: flexed feet, bent knees, and deliberately awkward physicality briefly destabilize the production’s ethereal atmosphere without ever breaking its theatrical coherence. The audience responded audibly throughout the evening, often erupting into genuine laughter—something surprisingly rare, and deeply refreshing, in ballet.
The production’s emotional high point arrives in the scenes between Titania and Bottom, where Shakespeare’s absurdity unexpectedly gives way to genuine tenderness. Hannah Carter and Matthew Griffin navigate this unlikely encounter with remarkable tonal intelligence, allowing comedy and beauty to coexist without canceling one another out. Their pas de deux unfolds with an almost dreamlike softness, fully immersed in the ballet’s enchanted atmosphere while never losing sight of its inherent strangeness. Particularly impressive is the production’s treatment of Bottom himself, when transformed into a donkey. Rather than encumbering the performer with an excessively elaborate animal construction, his head remains lightweight and mobile enough to preserve the choreography’s fluidity and partnering. The result is theatrical fantasy at its most effective: visually imaginative, slightly ridiculous, emotionally sincere, and never burdened by unnecessary spectacle. This same principle extends throughout the production as a whole. Whether in its translucent scenic layers, restrained lighting palette, or elegantly functional costumes, A Midsummer Night’s Dream consistently demonstrates how theatrical magic can emerge not through excess, but through precision, clarity, and taste.
Throughout the evening, the live Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre Orchestra, under the direction of Charles Barker, lends the production a continuous sense of musical vitality and sustained theatrical energy. Yet the arrival of the Mendelssohn Choir of Pittsburgh transforms the evening once again. The convergence of Felix Mendelssohn’s luminous score, choral singing, and choreography produces one of the production’s most emotionally overwhelming moments. The music acquires an enveloping theatrical presence that continuously amplifies the ballet’s atmosphere of wonder, enchantment, and comic romantic chaos. Particularly striking is the way the production allows these elements to coexist without competing for dominance: dance never becomes subordinate to music, nor does the score merely function as accompaniment. Instead, movement, orchestration, and voice sustain one another in a shared dreamlike register that carries the audience effortlessly through the evening’s shifting emotional landscapes. Rarely does a ballet production feel so confident in the simple pleasure of theatrical enchantment.
Unknowingly, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre also assembled a graceful homage to Stevenson, who passed away only months before the production’s premiere in Pittsburgh. Watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream now feels not only like entering Shakespeare’s enchanted forest, but also like revisiting the legacy of a choreographer deeply committed to theatrical beauty and dramatic potency. Premiered in 2022 for Texas Ballet Theater, Stevenson’s version reveals a remarkable confidence in the expressive possibilities of ballet itself: movement carries emotion; atmosphere sustains narrative; theatricality emerges through elegance rather than excess. One does not necessarily leave the theater remembering every detail of Shakespeare’s intricate plot. Yet the passions remain vividly present—the confusions, jealousies, tenderness, comic reversals, and enchantments that animate the original play continue to reverberate through gesture and image. In Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s hands, A Midsummer Night’s Dream becomes something rare: a production unafraid of beauty, humor, fantasy, and delight. In an artistic landscape often suspicious of enchantment, this alone feels quietly radical.
TICKETS AND DETAILS
Pittsburgh Ballet Theater’s production of A Midsummer Nights Dream is at the Benedum Center through May 17,2026. Tickets available at: https://pbt.org/performances/a-midsummer-nights-dream-with-the-pbt-orchestra
Guilherme is a Brazilian theater and dance critic, practitioner, and scholar whose practice moves between criticism, performance studies, and contemporary artistic practices. He is a PhD student in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. www.guilhermeyazbek.com
Categories: Arts and Ideas, Reviews
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