[I’m very happy to offer a post by Christopher Cassidy, assistant dramaturg on our shows this summer.]
Hermia and Helena. Helena and Hermia. These faux-Greek names can get confusing. To complicate matters further, these two women grew up together and are best friends! In some sense, Shakespeare intends us to be a bit confused, reaffirming Helena’s assertion that they “grew together/Like to a double cherry, seeming parted/ But yet an union in partition,/ Two lovely berried moulded on one stem” (III.2.208-11). And then there’s the matter of the love triangle. Hermia loves Lysandra and Lysandra loves her. (We’ve made the character female in our production. More on this later.) But her father wants her to marry Demetrius. Demetrius loves Hermia, but Hermia isn’t interested. And Helena loves Demetrius but he isn’t interested. Then, because of Puck and Oberon’s mischief, Lysandra and Demetrius both fall for Helena. This in turn causes Helena to accuse Hermia of playing a mean trick on her with Demetrius and Lysandra. Clear enough, huh? Hermahmah? And Helewah? Okay. What? One of the trickiest parts of A Midsummer Night’s Dreamis distinguishing between the two. Fortunately, all of this can be clarified in production. Unfortunately, most productions don’t sufficiently parse the text to uncover the fact that Hermia and Helena have very distinct personalities.
In the New Swan production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Crystal Kim and Maya Smoot, playing Hermia and Helena respectively, in collaboration with director Eli Simon, have created two distinct and compelling characters. Crystal Kim’s Hermia is small in stature, but oversized in heart and determination. She will make Lysandra her wife, consequences be damned. Maya Smoot’s Helena, unlike the impulsive and fiery Hermia, is brainy, reflective, and has a tendency to live too often in our own thoughts or get lost in a book. As our production is set in 1950s America, costume designer Katie Wilson selected a pair of horn-rimmed glasses with black plastic frames for Smoot’s Helena to wear. This is a girl who likes to study. Who is so busy looking at her latest selection of library books that she ends up tripping and dropping them all. Really. She does. And it’s really very endearing.
The distinctive personalities of Hermia and Helena really come through in Simon’s staging of the quarrel between the four lovers in III.2 as a knock-down drag-out fight. The scene is rife with physical comedy, but looks more serious than slapstick. Certainly in a state of enchantment, the quartet does these cruel things to each other that they otherwise wouldn’t. Still, their personalities, however exaggerated, come through. Incensed that her best friend Helena seems to have seduced her lover Lysandra and suitor Demetrius, Crystal Kim’s Hermia must be physically restrained. Lysandra and Demetrius at several points have no choice to hold her back, and even then, her emotions run so high it’s a struggle. And whatever you do, don’t mention her small stature! Overall, Kim’s performance does justice to Helena’s remark about Hermia in the midst of the feud: “though she be but little, she is fierce” (III.2.325). Smoot’s Helena by contrast sincerely feels that the other three are carrying out a cruel trick against her. Genuinely hurt and saddened, she struggles to get the words out. Initially on the verge of sobbing, her breath grows heavier. The frantic hand motions, often directed to her heart, convey a sense of the character’s flabbergasted state. Even so, our Helena’s absent-minded behavior comes through when she uses a brief lull in the fight to wipe her glasses. Might there be a bit of Hermia in Crystal and Helena in Maya? Sometimes I wonder. But I’ll leave that up to you for when you come and see the show.