STAGE REVIEW : Troupe’s ‘Night’ Is Too Dark : The gloomy staging by Rancho Santiago College’s Professional Actors Conservatory steals a lot of the joy from Shakespeare’s phantasmagoric comedy.

Rancho Santiago College’s Professional Actors Conservatory filters “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” through a glass darkly, an approach that, while intriguing, strips much of the joy from Shakespeare’s phantasmagoric comedy.

Director Robert G. Leigh has deposited the tale of fickle love and magical shenanigans in a land of technological and spiritual foreboding. E. Scott Shaffer’s gloomy set appears to be an underground industrial complex where tangles of black pipes and wires replace the lush forest usually associated with the play.

We glimpse the natural world outside--a huge moon hangs amid a few glittering stars--but it’s the faraway, almost teasing view from deep in a man-made cavern. This is not a pretty place for passion to grow.

Then there’s Leigh’s molding of Oberon (Steve Grodt). Here, his mystic imperialism is turned into something approaching demonism. Done up in Laura E. Deremer’s spooky “Masters of the Universe” costuming, Oberon is like a small-town Satan, scaring the heck out of poor Puck (Michael Ambrosio) and his gang of fairies, a nasty-looking group if ever there was.

Is Leigh’s revisionism aimed at underscoring the difficulty of finding romance and love in a time of AIDS, self-isolation and modern complications? Whatever the goal, something has been forfeited in the translation--mainly the giddy effervescence of a classic that, while layered in irony, nonetheless embraces love while toying with its folly. Even when the verve picks up, as it does at the close of Act I, the staging’s overall anxiety shadows everything.

Leigh’s creativity does make for some interesting passages, including his handling of Bottom (Steve Diebold) and his band of bumbling thespians, played here as a troupe of excitable frat boys. Their preparation for the acting to come (Eve S. Kikawa choreographed these eclectic stylings) is an indescribable (and very funny) mix of party-time self-expression and automaton conformity.

The acting was spotty at Friday’s opening night, but Hermia (Glynna Goff), Lysander (David Fraioli), Helena (Karen Razler) and Demetrius (Mark Moyer) do bring a few moments of needed romantic rapture to the proceedings. The most confident and affecting performance comes from Jane Hebson as the queen of the nymphs, Titania.

‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’

A Rancho Santiago College Professional Actors Conservatory production of Shakespeare’s play. Directed by Robert G. Leigh. With Linda Klett, William Mengle, James Rice, Candice Livengood, Jeff King, Neil Hersh, Greg Walters, Ineke Stoneham, Stephen Macias, Glynna Goff, Mark Moyer, David Fraioli, Karen Razler, Philip Hart Briggs, Steve Diebold, Max Mastrangelo, Michael Dennick, Geoff Osberg, Michael Louie, Jennifer Macleod, Michael Ambrosio, Steve Grodt, German Arellano, Mark Drake, Terrance Elton, Jane Hebson, Bethanie Knieser, Kathleen Talafus, Malina Leang and Consuelo Aduviso. Set by E. Scott Shaffer. Costumes by Laura E. Deremer. Choreography by Eve S. Kikawa. Lighting by Monique L’Heureux. Music and sound by Justus Matthews. Plays Thursday through Sunday at 8 p.m. with a Sunday matinee at 2:30 p.m. at the campus’s Phillips Hall Theatre, 1530 W. 17th St., Santa Ana. Tickets: $6 and $8. (714) 564-5661.