STAGE REVIEW : Theatricum Botanicum Perfect Setting for a Very Good ‘Dream’

Theatricum Botanicum’s wooded setting in a shaded vale is a perfect frame for most of Shakespeare’s plays, but none more so than “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” his comedy of young love at odds with itself.

Titania and her fairies, and the thundering Oberon and his waggish Puck, can disappear behind a hillock and reappear moments later in a tree across the basin where the theater’s basic stage sits. It’s a magical spot for a magical play. This staging of what is probably Shakespeare’s most produced play has its flaws, but also thrives on its joys.

The flaws are dismissible. Some cross-gender casting is a little off-putting but at least doesn’t get in the way. The company’s director, Ellen Geer, alternates in the role of Oberon, Titania’s male counterpart, and in spite of her well-spoken performance does not give the King of the Fairies the power and vibrancy he has to have. This Oberon is too softly effeminate to believably and effectively wage battle with Laura Wernette’s striking, forceful Titania.

The role of Puck, often essayed with varying levels of success by women, is played by the estimable Melora Marshall, but instead of exploding with joyous abandon she makes her Puck merely cute. He is not a forest trickster at all, and frequently fades unnoticed into the crowd of Titania’s fairies.

The casting and performances of the four young lovers are absolutely right. They are all attractive, even Helena, who’s not supposed to be, and have an absolute ball cavorting through Shakespeare’s romantic hoops, calling each other over vast distances, colliding among the trees.

Susan Angelo is a comic angel of a Helena, and Victoria Hoffman’s Hermia is as sweet and lovestruck as any Hermia ever was. But the bulk of the fun is in the hands of their stalwartly silly suitors, Cameron Bancroft’s heroic but goofy Lysander, and Chambers Stevens’ kinetic explosion of a Demetrius. The production belongs to them and Geer’s conception of their flights of love.

There are also some good comic moments from Alan Blumfield’s Bottom (although he does slip into W. C. Fields when turned to an ass by Puck) and David Johnstone’s Peter Quince, and the mechanicals’ play within the play is not without its own few chuckles.

This “Midsummer Night’s Dream” has body and charm, but all is overshadowed by its foolish young lovers. And they, after all, are what the play is all about.

At 1419 N. Topanga Canyon Blvd., Topanga; Sundays, 4:30 p.m.; ends Sept. $11; (213) 455-3723.