Ventura County Weekend : THEATER : NOTES : ‘Midsummer Night’ a Wild Winter Romp : California Shakespeare Company--no slave to the season--offers a pared-down, but riotous, production.

One of Shakespeare’s most popular plays, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” has been performed locally several times during the past few years. Still, when the right production comes along, it’s always welcome. Such is the case with the California Shakespeare Company’s current edition, playing through Dec. 17.

Seasonality means nothing to director William Fisher: After presenting “Twelfth Night” (set near Christmas) this past April, there’s some sort of consistency to his November “Midsummer.”

Fisher’s stripped-down version runs about two hours. That economy, plus the reinforcement of the play’s farcical elements with a good deal of physical comedy, makes the play ideal as a first exposure to Shakespeare.

The plot is set up quickly: Demetrius and Lysander are both in love with Hermia. Hermia loves Lysander, but Athenian law mandates that she should marry Demetrius, whose old girlfriend, Helena, is still pining after her former beau. Action swiftly shifts to the enchanted wood, where Oberon, King of the Fairies, casts a mischievous spell on his Queen, Titania: Upon awakening, she shall fall in love with the first living creature she spies. That turns out to be Bottom, one of a troupe of amateur actors, his body temporarily topped by the head of a donkey (the result of another spell).

While Fisher doesn’t set the play in modern times, several of the characters sound quite up-to-date. Demetrius and Lysander are played as a couple of dudes straight out of the “Bill and Ted” movies--or, perhaps, “Dumb and Dumber.” Two of the woods’ fairies, Cobweb and Peaseblossom, are punked-up in platinum shag wigs, one of which California Shakespeare fans may recall was worn by Ariel in “The Tempest” a few years ago. Different actress, same look.

(Fisher chooses to use women as these fairies; as when he used a female Ariel, the effect is quite different from having a male play the same part, though they’re written as essentially asexual).

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Shakespeare’s troupe of actors is timeless: Anyone will recognize the one who keeps pushing for more lines, the one who asks for as few as possible because he has a hard time learning them, and the overall mix of ego and unctuousness. But seldom have those elements been combined as hilariously as by Shakespeare. Fisher cut the number of actors from six to four, an economy that makes everything even funnier.

Performances are of high quality where they count, with Diana Skolnik a funnier Helena as her frustration grows, Sharon Dasho as Hermia, Ross Taylor as Demetrius, and Shane Nickerson as Lysander. Frederic Rooney, David A. Kozen, Robert Cabe and Evan Green portray the traveling theatrical troupe (Kozen is Bottom; Green plays a lion and a wall); Jenny Castle and Sara Quick are the punkette fairies; with Jeff Wallach as Oberon’s right-hand mischief-maker, Puck. Brett Elliott is a commanding Oberon, with Jennifer Bledsoe as the bewitched Titania. Wallach is credited with choreographing the goofy dance at the play’s climax.

Notably, many of the players here are new to the company. It seems as though the talent pool is deeper, even, than earlier productions might have prompted one to think--and this even with a couple of dozen actors busy elsewhere rehearsing another group’s production of “Romeo and Juliet” for January.

* “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” continues at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 3 p.m. Sundays through Dec. 17 at the California Shakespeare Company, 6685 Princeton Ave. (Varsity Park Plaza) in Moorpark. Tickets are $14; $12 for students and seniors. For reservations--strongly recommended--or further information, call 498-3354 or 373-9243.

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CASTING CALL: Auditions will be held Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 9-10, for Tennessee Williams’ “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.” All parts are open, including two children, 9 to 14. Rehearsals will begin Jan. 22, with performances at the Ojai Arts Center beginning March 15. For an audition appointment, phone director Seth Oserin 647-2292 or producer Al Moresco at 646-2514.