Midsummer Night's Cream, A

Remember when you were in high school or college and had to study the works of Shakespeare, and the teacher or professor always brought in some cheesy PBS production of one of his plays that you had to sit through? Well, now educators everywhere have a new option to go to when studying the works of 'ol Will! Adult film takes on Shakespeare in A Midsummer Night's Cream, an Adam & Eve production with high production values, and surprisingly faithful to both the original theme and text of the Bard's tale.

Nina Hartley stars as Titania, and Evan Stone takes on the role of Oberon, king and queen of the faeries, who seem to have a little too much fun using us mere mortal humans as their playthings. The movie opens with a five girl lesbian orgy, that Nina watches. There's nothing too hardcore here, as most of the action consists of licking and fondling each other. It sets a nice tone for the film, which proves to be a good one for couples, as most of the sexual action is romantic in nature.

Next up, we find a couple of humans, Ava Vincent and Michael J. Cox making out near a campfire. After the sex, while the couple is , Oberon's assistant Puck (played by McKayla) comes over and rubs a special flower over Michael J. Cox's eyes. The idea here is that whomever Michael sees when he wakes up he will fall head over heels in love with. Well, instead of looking at Ava, Sydnee Steele just happens to be walking by when Michael opens his eyes. Sydnee is already after Nick East, so now she has the attention of two men.

Oberon decides to use this little spell on his wife as well, but when she wakes up she sees Kyle Stone, who has be transformed into a donkey (actually he looks more like Lon Chaney's Wolfman). So of course, Nina falls for the donkey and the two make out. You have to give Kyle some credit for wearing that silly makeup and braying like a donkey for about ten minutes, but he did get to have sex with Nina, so I guess it all evens out.

Meanwhile Sydnee has decided instead of having both men fight over her, she will just take them both (this is porn, remember!). There's a nice three-way between her, Michael and Nick, but I was a little disappointed that the cumshots from both guys only landed on Sydnee's breasts.

The final scene is a winner, as King and Queen team up and Evan and Nina finally get it on. According to the behind the scenes featurette on the DVD, this was the first coupling between Nina and Evan, and both were apparently really looking forward to it.

So while not the best introduction to the Bard, A Midsummer Night's Cream makes a really good introduction for couples looking to try out adult films for the first time. She should enjoy the costumes, settings and romance...and hey, there's more than enough hardcore action for him to watch!

The bonus features is where this DVD really shines, offering a number of hidden bonus scenes on the disc, plus the previously mentioned behind the scenes featurette and other bonuses such as cast biographies, internet access, trailers and a photo gallery. The audio is top notch, but the video is not pristine, which seems to be a problem with most shot-on-film adult DVD transfers no matter what studio is doing them.

The latest big budget epic to come from writer-director Stuart Canterbury is the erotic adaptation of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer's Night Dream", re-titled in true porno fashion as A Midsummer's Night Cream. Believe it or not, this is an adaptation in more than just name, Canterbury has remained remarkably faithful to the Bard's classic sex comedy, (when I'm not watching people fuck on film, you can usually catch me enjoying some of Will's work at the local theater) but sometimes he stays a little too close for comfort.

One of the flick's best scenes is the opening, where we find Nina Hartley, as the Queen of the Fairies, frolicking with her spirits. And when your talking about spirits like Shay Sweet, Ginger Paige, Heather Lynn, and Nakita Kash, watching them play their little fairy games is a lot of fun. The costumes are beautifully designed, setting the stage for the mystical story, but not getting in the way of these beautiful creatures from getting their fingers and tongues in all the right places. This scene, however, also sums up what's lacking in this flick. You have half a dozen of the sexiest starlets, dressed in erotic, creative costumes, and they're engaged in a completely mediocre girl-girl orgy. All this carnal potential, and Canterbury has them going through the same motions we've seen a thousand times before.

Soon Oberon, played by Evan Stone, interrupts their interlude, looking for a little tail himself. Nina is outraged and disappears with her girls. As the story goes, Oberon and his assistant Puck (McKayla, with a goatee and chest hair) are armed with a flower that has nectar that will make some one fall in love with the first person they see. Oberon sets Puck off to start some mischief, by putting the nectar in the eyes of a pair or star crossed lovers, as well as Nina Hartley, so Oberon can get some of her fairy lovin' for himself.

Here's where some of the faithfulness to the story starts to get us into trouble. Anyone who knows the story knows that Puck turns the first person the fairy princess sees into a donkey-man, to embarrass her, as she falls in love with an ass. Well, Canterbury sticks to the Bard's words, and when Nina awakes, she falls in love with Kyle Stone, who has been turned into, you guessed it, a donkey-man. This being a porno, Nina gets to wrapping her legendary lips around our donkey-man's cock, which is quite a sight to see. Now, I'm the first one to admit that I would dress up like a donkey if it meant I would get to work Nina's million dollar ass, but you gotta feel sorry for Kyle, as he brays like a donkey as he works his cock into Nina. The two share a pretty hot scene, seeing as how she's fucking a donkey, but they wind up with a pretty average pop shot on Nina's tummy. Which is a shame, 'cause a good facial was all this scene needed to send it over the top.

Evan Stone, still looking to dip his wick, runs into one of Nina's fairies, played by Cheyenne Sliver, who's all too happy to service the king. No woman watching this flick would blame her, since Evan's all decked out in medieval gear that accentuates his killer build. Evan really has his way with her, following up some perfectly ordinary foreplay with the flick's only anal scene. So much creative energy goes into the costumes and sets in this production, all it needed was real sexual heat to turn it into a classic, but unfortunately, this scene is wrapped up with a rather tame cumshot on Cheyenne's rear.

When Evan and Nina finally meet up, the sparks really fly. Years of cocksucking has perfected her technique, and Evan would have to feel honored as he watches this hall-of-famer work his tool. The behind the scene featurette on this DVD reveals that Hartley and Stone have been waiting to fuck each other for awhile, and this scene shows that they weren't kidding. This is easily the hottest scene in the movie, and while Evan still blows his load on her stomach, it is an impressive load.

While this production gets extra points for its creativity, the features loaded on the DVD gets even higher marks. The animated menu keeps the magical mischief of the story by loading hidden features all throughout the disc. As you navigate the different pages of the disc, you can access some previously unreleased footage of the performers that is much hotter than what's in the main movie. Trailers, and home footage of the starlets in action is hidden in the corners of the disc, so have fun and keep looking, you never know what you'll find.

While this flick has a lot of the production values and creativity that makes a movie like Flashpoint one to remember, it's missing the sexual rawness that made Flashpoint a classic. It could make a nice introduction to porn for women, since the scenes are somewhat tame, and all the men in the movie are attractive and attentive to the women (with the exception of Donkey-Boy!).

The DVD version of this video has some fun extras, including hidden buttons you can click on during the film to see other sex scenes (not from this movie). You can also play the film so that there is only sex, though that would seem to defeat the purpose of this feature. The behind the scenes documentary is a lot of fun, and Nina Hartley is her usual personable self. The transfer quality is also good. As is typically the case, the DVD is better than the video.

Perhaps because of the success of "Shakespeare in Love", there has been a recent rash of Shakespeare spin-offs, including "Shakespeare in Lust" (just an anal comp, nothing to do with Shakespeare), "West Side", "In the Flesh", and "Shakespeare Revealed". "A Midsummer Night's Cream" is among the better Shakespeare porns to have been made.

Canterbury has managed to kept Shakespeare's text, though the cuts are predictably major. Still, the line readings, especially Nina Hartley's, are very good, and this is recognizably an adaptation of the play, much closer to it than Canterbury's "In the Flesh" is to Macbeth. Some porn producers think that the actors can't remember the lines and that audiences won't get them even if the actors do. This film gives the lie to that assumption (as does "Shakespeare Revealed"). Although cutting the last scene with the play within the play in particular is a lost opportunity in that it has the most bawdy jokes of any part of the play, the cuts make for an interesting interpretation, one focused more on the transgressive aspects of sexual fantasy explored in Shakespeare's play rather than the normative, patriarchal institution of institution ostensibly celebrated in the first and last acts. This dark version of the play is at the opposite end of the spectrum, where we'd find the light-hearted Max Reinhardt film version with Mickey Rooney as Puck and James Cagney as Bottom.

The opening lesbian orgy scene, for example, highlights the power of female sexuality. Although the Amazon Hippolyta has been cut, Titania becomes in some ways an even stronger Amazonian presence. In the opening number, she presides over a lesbian orgy of her faeries. So when Oberon (Evan Stone) interrupts Titania, it seems that her falling out has to do with her being lesbian rather.

Scene two has the lovers Lysander (Michael J. Cox) and Hermia (Ava Vincent) making love outside, a possibility called up in the recent "Midsummer Night's Dream" directed by Michael Hoffman, who has the lovers awake nude, as if they had been having sex.

Scene three also explores an aspect of the play other film productions have taken up more delicately. Does Bottom have sex with Titania? In the recent Adrian Noble film version, they clearly do. And here Kyle Stone and Hartley do go at it, with Stone in a Donkey head dress.

And in another interesting development, Puck (McKayla) is cross-dressed. During this scene, she magically changes her gender, and masturbates as she watches Bottom and Titania having sex. It's as if "As You like It" had merged a bit with a "Midsummer Night's Dream". Much of Puck's epilogue remains at the end of Canterbury's film.

In the next scene, Oberon has sex with one of Titania's faeries (this is not at all in the play). This is the one anal sex scene. It's a very good one, though Cheyenne Silver's line "Your cock feels so good in my ass" was clearly not written by the Bard.

Scene five is a hot three way with Sidnee Steele, Michael J. Cox, and Nick East as Helena, Lysander and Demetrius. This is certainly a more romantic development than any in Shakespeare's play. Steele takes them both on, and sucks them both off until they each spurt on her breasts. The woman is hot!

And the final scene is with Oberon and Titania having sex. Hartley is really great here, conveying her usual sense of enthusiasm and affection. It's no wonder she has so many fans.

As an interpretation of Shakespeare, this film is very interesting. As a porno, it is less successful. The sex scenes are generally very good, but they tend to be a bit formulaic and repetitive. There are also fewer shots used than I'd like. The opening lesbian scene was not much of a turn on for me, just some fake groaning and generally slow movement.

In some ways, Shakespeare porn has gone further in the direction mainstream Shakespeare adaptations have recently gone. In Kenneth Branagh's "Hamlet", for example, there is a nude scene with Hamlet and Ophelia having sex. And Oliver Parker's "Othello" also has R-rated sex scenes. If you like this film, try as well Ren Savant's "Shakespeare Revealed" (you can see McKayla have sex in that one), "Juliet and Romeo", "West Side" and "Hamlet X". One hopes that more Shakespeare porns like Canterbury's will be made, actually using the text as much as possible.