O.C. STAGE REVIEW : An Amateur Night’s ‘Dream’ : The current Laguna Playhouse version of the Shakespeare comedy succeeds with a style that has eluded some recent professional productions.

Shakespeare, anyone?

Like tennis, playing the Bard is a game more exacting for pros than amateurs. But you needn’t be a pro to play. And who better than that sporty old dame, the Laguna Playhouse, to offer a charming tournament of amateurs with “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

This comedy, written in 1595 or thereabout, is one of Shakespeare’s most popular, entertaining and accessible works. But for all its heady antics, it can be tedious.

You have only to recall Kenneth Branagh’s staging at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles a few years back. That overlong and overrated production fussed like a grandiose dowager. Fun, it wasn’t.

The same could be said for Paul Marcus’ fastidious attempt shortly afterward at South Coast Repertory in Costa Mesa. Somewhere in theater oblivion there may still be an SCR audience undergoing the unspeakable torture of its bone-dry frolics.

Dare we say the amateur Playhouse’s brightly confected version, which opened Thursday at the Moulton Theatre, succeeds in having fun where those others didn’t? Playhouse artistic director Andrew Barnicle has served up a bite-sized pastry of a “Dream.” It’s a candy-colored dessert, a romp with the right attitude.

If the company on the whole is less graceful or powerful than a professional troupe, so be it. You don’t go to the Moulton expecting to see the Royal Shakespeare Company.

But in this production you do get a swift first act that reaches the intermission almost before you notice, which isn’t a bad way to go, and a second act featuring a sterling piece of comic casting in the match between Bottom, the weaver (George J. Woods), and Titania, the queen of the fairies (Debbie Grattan).

Their performances, alone and together, are wonderfully watchable.

Woods’ deluded Bottom brings out the most farcical elements of Shakespeare’s plot about the fickleness of love without going so far over the top that it cheapens the effect.

Grattan’s mellifluous Titania lends unexpected weight to the sublimely ridiculous passion she feels for Bottom after his transformation, literally, into a braying ass. Of all the players in the cast, Grattan luxuriates best in the graceful lyricism of Shakespeare’s language.

Their performances are so dynamic, moreover, that the production keys on them and their associates--Oberon (John Gardiner), who is Titania’s jealous lover; Puck (Mark Coyan), who is Oberon’s servant, and Bottom’s loutish friends--rather than drawing our attention to the Athenians who make up the other half of the plot.

This is all to the good, because none of the Athenians manage to bring off their roles with nearly as much fluency, including the central pair of love-struck mismatches: Lysander (Thomas Sunstrom) and Hermia (Betsy Baldwin), and Helena (Carrie Pohlhammer) and Demetrius (Jay Proskovec).

In fact, in the opening scene at the court of Theseus (John Ross Clark) and in various scenes afterward in Oberon’s magical forest they have an unfortunate tendency to rant. Their delivery reduces the noble blank verse Shakespeare wrote for their characters to the sort of doggerel he wrote for Bottom strictly as a spoof.

The unintended irony of these patricians looking so elegant in their updated Napoleonic uniforms and Empire gowns but sounding like low-lifes threatens to capsize the production.

Nevertheless, when Barnicle’s clear intent is to stage “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” as sweet-tempered, enchanting and undemanding as a children’s show for grown-ups, it’s easy to overlook the flaws and simply enjoy the offer.

* “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Moulton Theater, 606 Laguna Canyon Road, Laguna Beach.Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., Sundays, 7 p.m. Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m. Ends June 6. $14-$19. (714) 494-8021. Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes.

John Ross Cark: Theseus

Tony Grande: Egeus

Thomas Sunstrom: Lysander

Jay Proskovec: Demetrius

Michael Thorstensen: Philostrate

Dick Harris: Peter Quince

George J. Woods: Bottom

Barry Wallace: Francis Flute

B. Aaron Cogan: Tom Snout

Tim Dey: Robin Starveling

Jock Patterson: Snug

Gianni Bogart: Hippolyta

Betsy Baldwin: Hermia

Carrie Pohlhammer: Helena

John Gardner: Oberon

Debbie Grattan: Titania

Mark Coyan: Puck

Elizabeth Ann Brooks: Titania’s Fairy

Sabrina Harper: Peaseblossom

Katy Killackey: Cobweb

Elisabeth Cass: Moth

Sara Buskirk: Mustardseed

Danielle Duhadway: Fairy

Katherin Bent: Little Fairy

A Laguna Playhouse production. Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Andrew Barnicle. Set and lighting design by Jeff Thomson. Costume design by Michael Pacciorini. Music by Steve Moshier. Sound design by David Edwards. Choreographer: Debra Proskovec. Stage Manager: Rece Toft.