There’s a murderer’s row of theatrical talent both on and offstage in Douglas Carter Beane’s new Off-Broadway comedy. A majority of the performers get applause merely from walking onstage, including such expert farceurs as Jackie Hoffman, Julie Halston, Arnie Burton, Ann Harada, Jason Tam, Kristolyn Lloyd, and even Mo Rocca. It’s a shame, then, that their hard-working efforts, and I mean hard-working, fail to make Fairycakes anything more than an unfortunate misfire. Although there will be some who find this mash-up of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and various fairy tales a delight, I suspect there will be many more who will feel like a trapped animal contemplating gnawing off his own foot to get free.
The term mash-up inevitably sparks apprehension (Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, anyone?), and those fears are almost immediately confirmed by this play almost entirely written in rhymed verse. Beane is an extremely clever playwright, as evidenced by such efforts as The Little Dog Laughed and As Bees in Honey Drown, among others, and cleverness indeed abounds here. The problem is that he seems to take such delight in his own wit that the play comes across like a loud drunk at a party laughing at his own jokes.
The first question one has to ask is, does Midsummer Night’s Dream really need spoofing at this point? There have been innumerable terrible productions of the play that have already done so unintentionally. Adding such classic fairy tale characters to the mix as Pinocchio, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and the Little Mermaid only adds to the unrelenting campiness of this elongated comedy sketch that might have been bearable as a fast-paced one-act but instead extends to an interminable two-and-a-quarter hours.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★☆☆☆ review here.]
You can feel the flop sweat of the performers as they strive mightily to put the material over. To their credit, they all do, at least at times. Halston is priceless as both Titania and Queen Elizabeth I, the latter character taking pains to explain her presence by citing an oblique reference in Shakespeare’s play. Burton is a hoot as a lusty Oberon and the pirate Dirk Dead-Eye, who at one point enters into a flirtation with Geppetto (Rocca, clearly game for anything). Hoffman, as the unlucky-in-love Moth who develops a fixation for the unseen Peter Pan, referred to only as “Greentights,” gets laughs every time she opens her mouth (and even when she doesn’t). Kuhoo Verma proves a delight as Cinderella and Aurora. And Tam hilariously milks his sex appeal as the Prince and a scantily clad Cupid who boasts, “I am a God, hey look at these buns/ Yes, I have a permit for these big guns.”
That’s an undeniably amusing line, and so are many others. The royal retainer Peaseblossum (Lloyd), referring to the warring Titania and Oberon, complains, “Their rage is like fire, the heat like a forge/They fight like that play with Martha and George.” Elizabeth, referring to her loveless state, complains, “Every girl finds her a boy who’s a mensch/Only one playing me is Judi Dench.” And Cricket (Jamen Nanthakaumar), after being fatally swatted by Pinocchio, assures the guilt-stricken puppet, “Don’t worry, Disney won’t tell that part.”
But the profusion of non-stop witticisms quickly proves more tedious than entertaining, and about as satisfying as a dinner composed entirely of bon bons. By the time most of the characters enter into a magic spell-induced slumber, you’ll be tempted to join them. The most enjoyable elements of this endlessly verbose show, ironically, are Gregory Gale’s costumes, which rival Beach Blanket Babylon and When Pigs Fly for campy cleverness.
One of the problems is the playwright has directed the show himself, resulting in a self-indulgent unwillingness to do the strenuous cutting it required. You can feel his desire to do nothing more than deliver a supremely silly comedy as a panacea for the recent hellish period we’ve all endured, and it’s a shame that the results are more enervating than joyful.
