Add A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM at the La Jolla Playhouse to the luxe menu of summer Shakespeare, along with the Globe’s LEAR and SHREW. What a paradise for a theatre hound!

This DREAM is a happy, energetic, charming production filled with bold visions, most of which work fairly well. As for the rest? Well, there’s always the endless torrent of gilded words and there’s quite a bit of Mendelssohn’s precious score – performed live!

A 27-member orchestra – six professionals augmented by San Diego Youth Symphony players – lifts the occasion to the edge of bliss, especially when they are playing more Mendelssohn than Mark Bennett, the composer who has augmented the master for the occasion.

La Jolla Playhouse' A Midsummer Night's Dream.

^{Photo by Craig Schwartz}

Bennett’s stuff is sometimes over-decorative background muttering and sometimes impertinent borrowing – bursts of Philip Glass, Gilbert and Sullivan for Puck’s “Up and down...” speech, mainstream modern Broadway melodeers for the fairy song to Titania’s enchantment – but usually respectful deference (though he does jerk around the dear old wedding march). What he does NOT mess with is Mendelssohn’s enchanted procession of four introductory chords, truly as magical as anything in the play itself.

Director Christopher Ashley decided on a Victorian setting, harmless enough for a play already so slippery that mythical Greeks mesh with the Elizabethan working class, and his principal vision is that of a world turned upside down when the action departs the stately halls of Athens and enters the fairy’s forest. It is always useful to find a vivid contrast for the two universes but this realization staggers under a load of the literal.

Neil Patel’s formal drawing room features chandeliers, a fireplace with fire, long billowy curtains and, amongst the furniture, a little grand piano played as part of the introductory septet. When the lights go weird and the machinery starts to whirr, the crystal fixtures become exotic woodland plants, the curtains turn into carefully manipulated will-o-the-wisps and that poor piano flies up and over without spilling its insides (which suggests the presence of a synthesizer).

Servants morph into fairies, who crawl about on the walls and flip each other with conspicuous muscularity. Some are more charming than others – tiny Tatyana Petruk, who also does silken suspension flying, is adorable – but the sad truth is that DREAM fairies allowed to freelance about generally just generate the mushy stage picture seen here.

And there’s a problem about whose side the fairies are on. Usually, they’re firmly in the employ of Titania, the queen out of sorts with her king, while Oberon, the king, does just fine with the sole help of the famed sprite Puck. Here, the fairies spend as much time messing with the four Athenian lovers as they do attending Titania.

It helps, though, that nearly every role is played by a fine actor. This is a cast deep in credits and rich in technique, a rare company that doesn’t sag somewhere.

Daniel Oreskes, in the two royal roles of Theseus and Oberon, has a fleshy menace emphasized by a vaguely sinister air of offhand authority that motivates the play’s process while Charlayne Woodard plays his queens with regal independence: defiant rivalry for Titania and moody adjustment for the defeated Hippolyta, a wife won in battle.

Ashley has smoothly avoided directorial excess in the two most flashy male roles, the bombastic striver Bottom and the mercurial spirit Robin Goodfellow, called Puck. Both parts invite over-the-top elaboration and rare is the actor who can strike the neat balance. Ashley has cast well and encouraged a healthy sheen of contemporary comedy. Thus Martin Moran controls Puck’s exuberance but remains alert to gags than make the boss laugh while Lucas Caleb Rooney is a true adventure guide, drawing everybody else into having nearly as much fun as he does.

Ashley has cast the four Athenian lovers older than usual, which serves mostly as an excuse to get the superb J. Smith-Cameron into a juicy comedy role, Helena, the tall one. Though Amelia Campbell overdoes the pug-dog aspect of Hermia, she pulls her oar. And the guys, Tim Hopper and Sean Mahon, are as ardent and privileged as a pair of fairytale princes.

Maggie Carney leads the mechanicals like a school marm dodging the slapstick and Bottom’s other colleagues, more doughty than is often the case, are Matthew Patrick Davis, Zachary Harrison, Hugo Medina and Christopher Douglas Reed. Together, they perform the burlesque PRYAMUS AND THISBE with organized gusto and dandy choreography. No free-lancing here.

Moran doubles deftly as Theseus’ master of revels and it’s not his fault that the final curtain speech sags. Jonathan McMurtry is present to add dignity and gravitas as the father complaining that his daughter loves the wrong boy and Amanda Naughton sings that Mark Bennett ballad very nicely.

Victorian costumes are a juicy choice for DREAM and David C. Woolard has taken enthusiastic advantage of the opportunity, faltering only on Puck and the boy fairies. Howell Binkley’s lighting continues a La Jolla tradition of luscious and unexpected blended washes with accurate pin-spots.

The expert puppeteer Basil Twist is credited as part of the creative staff but I noticed little of his work.

In this show, Christopher Ashley has delivered a garden of earthly delights and gossamer fantasies. If they don’t all match, they each do pretty good within themselves. And it’s a show few will watch without smiling.

DOWNLOAD PROGRAM HERE

DOWNLOAD CAST LIST HERE

DOWNLOAD ORCHESTRA DETAILS HERE