Last weekend, the Tomball stage presented the Shakespearean play, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play was a huge success, and the reviews from students were good overall.

“It was really nice seeing the theater, it was nice seeing the direction that’s its going,” said Grayson Hailey, a Theater senior who graduated last year. “It was great seeing the new actors so dedicated to their roles.”

The dialogue of the show was old Elizabethan, and actors had a difficult time adjusting to the new manner of speaking. Even excluding the unique word structure, most audiences generally have difficulty understanding Shakespeare.

“Midsummer was a new experience for everybody,” Brian Smelley, the actor who played Demetrius, said. “The directors at this time wanted to make everyone understand the show, make them want to come see it. And from the outcome of all four shows, I think we hit our goal.”

Though the play didn’t go off completely without error, especially for the Friday performance. During which, the phrase ‘good luck’ was said twice, and someone said ‘Macbeth.’ Both phrases are reputed to bring bad luck if said during a show, or where the arts are performed. Also during the night, Smelley stepped on a nail backstage, driving it deep into his heel. Having no understudy, Smelley was forced to perform despite his injury.

“I missed a line at one point from the pain, but thankfully I had a really good co-actor who kept it going,” Smelley said. He continued with the show, as he had no understudy, and managed to get through the rest of it with little to no notice of his injury. The fight scene however, proved difficult.

“When he (Lysander) jumped on my back, it took every ounce of will to carry him to the hill.”

Despite this bit of bad luck, the cast and crew performed admirably, and the audience was still treated to some of the Tomball Stages best work.

Arguably the most impressive aspect of the show was the set. The structural architecture was an impressive addition to the stage, and the artistic imagery was essential to the play.

“We started out with the hills in the back, they were our biggest challenge,” Brian Dornbusch said. “After that we moved onto the palace platforms, and the spinning torrents. After that it was a bunch of aesthetic creations. Its taken us about three and a half weeks.”

“My personal favorite thing would probably have been the turrets, just the fact that we build something that doubled as two things.”

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