As you enter the theatre, the actors (of a company called Propeller, from the Watermill Theatre in England) are lounging around onstage, dressed identically in white long johns. Enter Puck, in a tutu over red-and-white horizontally striped tights; he hands out pieces of costume to the others, and sits down to watch "A Midsummer Night's Dream" unfold. When not otherwise occupied, the actors doff their individuating costume elements and rejoin the chorus of long-johned fairies who pervade the play, with Puck as the master of the revels. Their setting is an open space, bounded by a curving catwalk in a warm shade of white that serves equally well for the court of Duke Theseus and the magical forest. Music, composed by three of the actors, is plinked, clinked, buzzed, and sung by the cast; no sound designer is credited -- or needed. In this lively and ingenious staging by Edward Hall, with scenery and wonderful costumes by Michael Pavelka and evocative lighting by Ben Ormerod, the "Dream" takes place in an invitingly unreal world where all sorts of strange things can happen.
All the actors are male, and those who don long skirts to play women make no effort to disguise their masculinity -- "fair Helena" is clearly subject to male pattern baldness. But there is nothing kinky, grotesque, or ironic about the cross-gender casting; it all becomes part of the breezy unreality of this production. Among the actors, Simon Scardifield as Puck stands out, but all of them play with clarity and with youthful, unforced comic energy, notably Barnaby Kay and Sam Callis as the fairy king and queen, Tony Bell as Bottom the Weaver, and Dugald Bruce-Lockhart, Jonathan McGuinness, Vincent Leigh, and Robert Hands as the four young lovers. This is a cheerful, friendly ensemble show: during the intermission, the entire cast, still in their long johns, gathers in the lobby to entertain us with some good old songs, sung melodiously in unison.