Skylight Rocks Out With Shakespeare

(I. to r) Front line: Zoah Hirano (Peaseblossom), Finley Brown (Orchid), Saum Seyed (Nick Bottom), Alexus Coleman (Cobweb), Averi Lauren Grier (Moth), back line: Jillian Vogedes (Mustardseed), and Stephanie Staszak (Titania) in Skylight Music Theatre’s production of A ROCKIN’ Midsummer Night’s Dream running April 10 through 26, 2026. Photo by Mark Frohna.

It’s become commonplace for modern theater companies to jazz up Shakespeare, bringing in modern musical genres, new settings, tongue-in-cheek spoofing, even adding a twang or two. But such generalities are not readily applicable to the long gestation and conceptual thinking behind the Skylight’s production of A Rockin’ Midsummer Night’s Dream.

Skylight artistic director and conceiver Michael Unger describes in a program note how this idea grew out of his East Coast tenure as a theater artist and high school theater champion in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012, how he and composer Eric Svejcar (he’s back this time as the formidable keyboardist) concocted the idea and performed it with high school students and some others as a way to combine modern power rock and trilling ballads with the fairies, sprites and crazy romantic notions of the original.

Unger and Svejcar, with 75% assistance from a playwright known as Will Shakespeare, have created blow-by-blow musical numbers even as fireflies, darting moths, balletic turns, scampering children and flowery smoke surge around the performers.

The Skylight has emptied its bag of stage magic, fancy finery and turntables (with an expert six-piece band downstage left, with Svejcar on the keyboard), going back to the original choreography of Kim Scharnberg, music direction of Jeffrey Saver, and importing the original charmer, actor Saum Seyed, to steal every scene featuring Bottom (including the primary showstopper “I Can Play That Too”).

There are many craft names to salute, but I was particularly impressed by lighting designer Smooch Medina. The stage is literally aswarm with movement as the power couples (Hippolyta, Theseus, Titania and Oberon) butt heads with the rustics putting on a wedding play and the lost couples (Hermia, Helena, Lysander and Demetrius), seduced by magic potions into comedic confusion.

One of Unger’s talents in stage management is to bring children, UW-Milwaukee students and seasoned professionals such as Seyed and Zach Thomas Woods as Peter Quince into the same ensemble, allowing the Skylight to advertise this as the “first professional world premiere” production, though it’s been in the works for years.

There is a problem, though. As wonderful and familiar as the original fantasy is, full of memorable dialogue and situations, the Unger-Svejcar concept is augmented with many musical numbers, more than 30.

All are professionally done and pleasant, dancing among operetta harmonies and extended big-voice “America’s Got Talent” endings. But this is nearly three hours with one intermission, and it feels like too much. Unger and Svejcar may be too close to their baby, as it needs some hard and difficult trimming to separate the best numbers from the more pedestrian.

The music is not as memorable as the Bard’s words – no wonder we remember his phrases more than the melodies – though the bridging into the musical numbers is noteworthy.

What is amazing about the musical overlay is the quality of voices the Skylight brings to this affair. The youngsters are obedient, talented and on pitch. The Puck of Lainey Techtmann who, I suspect is 13 years old, offers a smoothness and humor in miming. She and the other light-but-pure soprano voices are well handled by the expert miking, while such Skylight veterans as Jackey Boelkow and Stephanie Staszak can blow us away with the power notes, and the UWM music students in the cast have the lyrical feelings the young lovers need.

There is no shame in how the actors handle the Shakespearean language — the rustics putting on the burlesque of a play remain a highlight — but the delivery is more utilitarian than elegant, letting the audience uncover the Bard’s wit and mischief for themselves.

A Rockin’ Midsummer Night’s Dream runs through April 26 at the Cabot Theater, closing out the Skylight’s subscription season. For tickets: https://www.skylightmusictheatre.org/midsummer

A Rockin’ Midsummer Night’s Dream Gallery

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Dominique Paul Noth served for decades as film and drama critic, later senior editor for features at the Milwaukee Journal. You’ll find his blog here and here. For his Dom’s Snippets, an unusual family history and memoir, go to domnoth.substack.com.