Richard Wattenburg, The Oregonian

March 19, 2014

“Midsummer (a play with songs)” by David Greig and Gordon McIntyre may not be the innocent magical romantic comedy that Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” is, but this two-hander and love story currently being offered by Third Rail Repertory Theatre has its own kind of charm—one that is at times edgy and contemporary, but ultimately tender and sweet.

In Shakespeare’s midsummer tale young lovers leave Athens to spend a night wandering bewilderedly through an enchanted forest before finding themselves properly matched. In Grieg and McIntyre’s play, the young lovers, Bob and Helena, are not so young and the tangled forest paths become the lanes and alleys of a rain-soaked modern day Edinburgh. Bob and Helena are both 35 and both are haunted by the feeling that time is getting away from them. But they are otherwise very different from each other. She’s a lawyer making good money, and he’s a petty criminal, who does odd jobs for a local hoodlum. […continued]

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