Barbara Lawlor, Gilpin County.  Prepare to laugh, to be enchanted and to go home in awe of the talent that will take the Gilpin High School stage this weekend, presenting Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The Gilpin County Players’ cast consists of GHS seasoned actors as well as 20 dancing fairies from the elementary school who have been rehearsing diligently for the past couple of months.

Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of Shakespeare’s most popular plays involving romance, mischief, magic and hilarious encounters of unlikely people falling in love. Thanks to the machinations of Puck, a fairy jester who loves to play tricks on humans. The plot brings an unlikely group of people together on a summer night in a forest.

Theseus, Duke of Athens prepares to marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, which will involve a four-day celebration. Egeus, a nobleman from Athens, brings his daughter Hermia, as well as Demetrius and Lysander. He wishes Hermia would marry Demetrius, but she loves Lysander. Theseus tells Hermia she must decide by his wedding date or be sent to a convent.

Hermia and Lysander plan to escape and tell Helena, who loves Demetrius. Helena tells Demetrius of the elopers’ plan. Demetrius goes into the woods after them, and Helena follows him.

The woods are filled with a band of fairies, including Oberon and Titania, the king and queen.

The second group in the woods is a group of Athenian actors, craftsmen, rehearsing a play to perform for the Duke and his bride. The couple has been squabbling over a beautiful boy who was sent to Titania. Oberon wants to make him a knight but Titania refuses and Oberon orders Puck to find a flower with magic love juice to spread on Titania’s eyelids. Puck is also instructed to put juice on Demetrius’s eyelids to make him fall in love with whomever he sees when awakening.

Mistaken identity occurs, and Lysander ends up with the love juice and falls in love with Helena. Puck confuses them until they are all lost in the woods, in love with the wrong people.

Titania wakes up and becomes besotted with Bottom, a weaver, one of the actors, who now has the head of an ass, thanks to Puck.

Sometimes hilarious, sometimes charming, always action packed with Shakespeare’s wisdom and enacted by the spunky Puck, the play ends with everyone ending up with whom they should.

It is a play that enables the characters to act their parts with no limits on their impersonations, to take the Bard’s words and make them their own.

As opening approaches, the Midsummer Night’s Dream cast is rehearsing without scripts and fine-tuning their movements and stage presence, their language emphasis and ease, with an Elizabethan wit.

Last Thursday, director Hannah Raynes went over details with the lead actors.

Raynes says, “I have an incredible group of talented kids who have grown with me and this program over the last five years. I knew these students were ready for a challenge and what better challenge than Shakespeare. We also have a growing department and need shows that cast a large number of kids. I could cast a large number of kids in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I also thought it was important to keep true to the original Shakespearean version. I read through all the high school versions that convert the old English language into modern day. I knew my students could handle the old English language. I chose a script performed by a group of adults in NYC in the early 90’s and my kids have taken the challenge on with ease. I’m so proud of them.”

Esmee Halsted takes on the challenging role of Puck whose job is to be here, there and everywhere on the stage wreaking havoc. Aiden Freeman, a Gilpin stage regular, plays Oberon, delivering his lines with ease. Claire Diekman is Titania; Sarah Trulls is Helena; Damion Sonsino is Demetrius; and Kristen Hardman plays Hippolyta.

MSND will be presented on April 19 and 20, 2018 at 7 p.m. and April 21 at Noon at the Miller-Headrick Auditorium at the Gilpin County School.