If you're in the mood for love and marriages, William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream provides more amore and matrimony than a year's worth of tabloid magazines. And just like the tabloids, A Midsummer Night's Dream offers salacious details and scandalous tidbits about royalty and commoner alike. Theseus, duke of Athens, is to marry Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, in a joyous celebration. Hermia is ordered by her father to marry Demetrius or die for her disobedience, but she loves Lysander. Titania and Oberon, queen and king of fairies, respectively, argue over who should have mastery over a young page, and Oberon arranges to teach his recalcitrant wife a lesson with help from a love potion and his servant, Puck. Puck instead administers the love potion to seemingly everyone save the right person, everybody in the forest falls in love with Hermia, and Titania develops a meaningful relationship with Bottom, a man with a donkey's head (again, thanks to Puck.) It's a jungle out there in the Athenian forest, especially under the light of a silvery moon. The Washington University Performing Arts Department presents A Midsummer Night's Dream at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday (February 25 through March 6) at Washington University's Edison Theatre (6445 Forsyth Boulevard; 314-935-6543 or padarts.wustl.edu). Tickets are $10 to $15.
Fridays-Sundays. Starts: Feb. 25. Continues through March 6, 2011