It's The '50S Once Again At Bathhouse's `Midsummer'

----------------------------------------------------------------- Theater review

"A Midsummer Night's Dream" by William Shakespeare. Directed by Arne Zaslove. Produced by Bathhouse Theatre, 7312 W. Green Lake Dr. N. Tuesday-Sunday through Dec. 30. 524-9108. -----------------------------------------------------------------

Whatever it was like being an American teen in the 1950s, the pop revisionist version in entertainments like the Bathhouse Theatre's current "Midsummer Night's Dream" long ago supplanted the real thing.

From Hollywood's "American Grafitti" to TV's "Happy Days" to Broadway's "Grease," we've been bombarded with images of an affable, dippy teendom of poodle skirts and greased-back hair, classic rock and puppy love, all teased and sprayed into a feel-good naivete that has virtually disappeared from American adolescence - if it ever thrived at all.

Turning Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" into a glorified "American Bandstand" episode back in 1968 was a prescient move for director Arne Zaslove. (That was even before the retro-rock group Sha Na Na hit paydirt with its spoofy '50s act.)

This new "Midsummer" production is Zaslove's seventh in a rock 'n' roll vein since his 1968 student effort at University of Washington. The "Midsummer" he and the Bathhouse presented in 1981 was so popular it ran six months - Seattle's longest-running musical until the monster hit "Angry Housewives" swiped the title.

Can box-office magic strike again for this jukebox musicalization of Shakespeare, last seen at the Bathhouse in 1986? Yup: hearty ticket sales have already extended the show's run.

And Zaslove does milk his gimmickfor all its worth. Into Shakespeare's farcical plot he inserts a lot of deft sight gags, and a dozen or so rock tunes first waxed by the likes of Dion ("Teenager in Love") and Elvis ("Don't Be Cruel") that fit right in. And he turns young wooers Hermia, Lysander, Helena and Demetrius into lively animations of comic-book icons Archie, Betty, Reggie and Veronica - while remaking Titania's fairies into cheerleading bobby-soxers.

But one can overdose on '50s kitsch - especially if it isn't conveyed with total high-gloss assurance. That's a problem for the Bathhouse, which continues here its recent practice of recruiting a young, eager but unevenly skilled cast that pours on more enthusiasm than polish.

Set in a gym right out of Rydell High, it takes "Midsummer" a good 20 minutes to rev up. The warmup tunes by the onstage Obertones band sound thin and enervated. The transitions from dreary graduation ceremony to farcical romp, American slang to Elizabethan verse, are bumpy.

The joint doesn't start jumping until Art Anderson, the cool Fonzie-style Oberon, rips into "Love Potion No. 9." Anderson has toured nationally in "Grease" and other musicals, and it shows in his vibrant voice and slick professionalism.

Also a standout: Mary Kae Irvin, whose Helena speaks Shakespeare's language with becoming naturalness, and whose frumpiness (she has mice on her skirt, not poodles) is endearingly laced with lust and good sense.

Teresa Castracane and Scott Koh, as Hermia and Lysander, are fine at the mushy stuff, but only so-so singers. Vocally erratic, too, are Heather Houghtaling's pouty Titania and Jenny Brite, a cute, tomboyish Puck who aces "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" but wavers on other tunes and speeds through her lines.

The comedic "rude mechanicals" led by Christopher Comte's earnest Peter Quince and J. Christopher O'Connor's dazed Flute, maneuver well through some nimble slapstick gags Zaslove has devised.

Spottily lit, but smartly costumed (by Susan Edie), the show has spurts of charm, but the execution too rarely transcends the shopworn concept. No doubt it will be a moneymaker - and the Bathhouse needs one. But '50s nostalgia just ain't what it used to be.