A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM

Neill offers a Shakespeare-inspired series entry that appealingly reads like a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode with talking animals.

The story follows the adventures of Janine, a humanoid personality “construct” of a technologically advanced civilization that dwells in an established space station that sits within view of a black hole, partially lit by its accretion disk. Over the course of the series, Janine has traveled into several plays and accumulated a Shakespearean retinue that includes Ophelia, Rosalind, Viola, Othello, three bears, two talking owls, and real-life English dramatist Christopher “Kit” Marlowe. The troupe’s activities are overseen by the Monitor, or “Monty,” who keeps a watchful eye on the stability of stories discovered previously and their “deviations from the intended plot.” In this entry, Janine and Kit enter Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Ali, one of the owls, ushers them from scene to scene; Kit acts as the perfect teacher to Janine, explaining Shakespeare’s poetic and dramatic choices, and she takes note: “Paying attention? It’s my job,” Janine says. The trio follow the play’s plot through its many twists and turns, reflecting on love and human foibles along the way. Back on the ship, Monty raises concerns about a plot disturbance within Love’s Labour’s Lost; Ophelia takes charge and leads Othello and other characters into the play to address the issue. The book follows the formatting conventions of a playscript but effectively uses thorough stage directions to offer minute details on characters’ motions, expressions, context, and locations. It reads like a miniseries, if half were modeled on the PBS kids’ show Wishbone, and the rest on holodeck-centered episodes of Star Trek. Along the way, Neill reveals himself as more of a director than a dramaturg; the thoughtful analysis sometimes falters, as when the work plays fast and loose with Demetrius and Helena’s relationship history, or, via Kit’s character, offers stagy shrugs of confusion. Still, Neill’s original dialogue (“Zounds, this corpse is counterfeit!”) and the playful treatment of Kit and Janine’s friendship are consistently charming.

An often engaging reading experience that falls somewhere between a modern translation of the Bard and a Jasper Fforde novel.