Magic spell cast in the Bard’s forest

Forest retreats, magical enchantments and romantic extravagance make “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” a perennial favorite for outdoor staging. Independent Shakespeare Festival brings a distinctively whimsical touch to its charming, accessible production on the South Lawn of Hollywood’s Barnsdall Art Park.

One can endlessly debate the finer points of interpretive staging, but the acid test for Shakespeare is how many times you find yourself wondering, “What did they just say?”

Credit director Melissa Chalsma and her first-rate cast for all but banishing confusion with consistent insight into the characters’ feelings and intentions. The limitless depths of self-abasement and humiliation the love-smitten are willing to endure in the pursuit of their beloved are hilariously exemplified in Chalsma’s bewitched fairy queen Titania and the two pairs of headstrong young lovers (Maude Bonnani, Erik Mathew, Aisha Kabia and Ahmad Enani). Freddy Douglas brings a mischievous presence to his nicely differentiated dual roles as the respective rulers of the human and fairy domains. Danny Campbell animates Bottom with lowbrow clowning, while Sean Pritchett’s scantily fur-clad Puck sets fairy hearts aflutter.

Rachel Ford Pritchett’s costumes, a witty clash of faux antiquity and hip contemporary, provide colorful adornments on an otherwise minimalist stage.

The result is Shakespeare that’s fun. The catch is that despite the nocturnal setting, the staging is relentlessly sunny. The broad humor eclipses the play’s darker elements -- the obsessive side of love and the horrific aspects of Bottom’s transformation into a braying jackass.

Still, it’s a small price to pay for a free evening of much higher-quality entertainment than one could reasonably expect.

-- Philip Brandes

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Barnsdall Art Park, 4800 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays through Sundays and some Wednesdays. Free, but reservations recommended. (818) 710-6306. Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes.

A Swift job on Gulliver’s trip

Adapting Jonathan Swift’s 1726 epic satire “Gulliver’s Travels” for the stage is a bit of a blivet: shoving 10 pounds of manure into a 5-pound bag. But the Actors’ Gang has staged a smart, irreverent -- and yes, scatologically emphatic -- version of the shipwrecked doctor’s classic journey through a series of fantastical civilizations. This is “Masterpiece Theatre” for an adult’s inner 10-year-old and probably great fun for certain preteens who have been told the facts of life.

In style and design, director P. Adam Walsh’s production has the feeling of Terry Gilliam’s “The Adventures of Baron Munchausen” -- a wrecked romanticism run amok. Francois-Pierre Couture’s inventive set features hanging fabrics that frame a central cloth scrim for John Burton’s witty shadow puppetry. And as Gulliver journeys from Lilliput (doll-sized) to Brobdingnag (giants) to the Houyhnhnms (brainy horses), each new world presents an opportunity for the production team to take us by surprise.

Highlights include a “dwarf-off” challenge, where Gulliver goes joke to joke with a Lilliputian court jester (“Thy mother art so small ...” “How small art she?”) and a three-minute history of the world that includes a puppet version of evolution so simple even Pat Robertson might be convinced.

This Gang’s “Gulliver” has all the jaunt of commedia but also its flattened psychology. Given the source material’s picaresque style and blunderbuss satire, this is probably unavoidable, but the result can feel driven by jokes instead of story. In Josh Zeller’s freewheeling adaptation, we’re never quite clear if Gulliver really wants to get back to England -- he tends to get homesick when narratively convenient. Yet the piece more or less holds together because of Zeller’s spun-out sense of humor, Ara Dabandjian’s music, the ensemble’s infectious energy and the focused charm of Keythe Farley as Gulliver, who trips lightly through his adventures while managing to convey their dark psychic cost.

-- Charlotte Stoudt

“Gulliver’s Travels,” The Actors’ Gang, Ivy Substation, 9070 Venice Blvd., Culver City. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays. Ends Sept. 8. $20-$25. (310) 838-4264 or www.theactorsgang.com. Running time: 2 hours.

Lurchingly the viewers roll along

Given that its founders named the Chromolume Theatre Company in an obscure reference to “Sunday in the Park With George,” their passion and commitment to staging the works of Stephen Sondheim are beyond question. In tackling the notoriously difficult “Merrily We Roll Along,” however, limited resources aren’t up to the demands of this 1981 follow-up collaboration among Sondheim, “Company” book writer George Furth and producer Hal Prince.

An updated musical version of the George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart play about the psychic price of showbiz success, “Merrily” traces the eroding friendship between a composer (Nathan Bouldin), his lyricist (Andrew Block) and their writer buddy (Ellen Caranasos), moving back in time from its final disintegration in 1976 to its origin 20 years earlier.

In this reverse chronology, reprises of the key character-driven songs relinquish their traditional function in resolving emotional arcs; instead, they take us on a journey of wrong turns and leave us contemplating youthful possibilities that never materialized.

When fully realized, the show is devastating. Unfortunately, director Gary Romm’s staging seems to equate disillusionment with fatigue, getting things off to a listless start. Early on, Block barely keeps up to tempo and lacks ferocity in his biting patter song about his friend’s transformation from gifted artist to commercial sellout.

While the leads are closer to their characters’ ages at the end of the story, their performances liven up in the “younger” scenes. The most accomplished singing is by Rachel Rawlins Prescott as the composer’s first wife, who appears only later in the show.

Overcoming the minimal production values (a badly hung white dropcloth and some movable black risers) requires more inventive blocking and choreography than we get, and despite Richard Berent’s fine piano playing, his three-piece combo can’t capture the score’s intricacies.

The infrequent opportunity to see the songs in their proper narrative context may be a sufficient lure for Sondheim fans, but be forewarned -- the experience is frustratingly incomplete.

-- P.B.

“Merrily We Roll Along,” Theatre/Theater, 5041 Pico Blvd., Los Angeles. 8 p.m. Fridays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. Ends Aug. 12. $5. (323) 960-7779 or www.plays411.com/merrily. Running time: 3 hours.

Challenged lovers in 1947 Beijing

Glossy invention accompanies “Film Chinois” at the GTC Burbank. This first U.S. production of Singaporean playwright Damon Chua’s work reveals an imaginative voice, with deft turns by stars Elizabeth Pan and Sean Dougherty as the ideologically challenged lovers in Chua’s film noir take on 1947 Beijing.

“Film Chinois” surveys the intrigue of the last days before Chairman Mao’s takeover by pitting Chinadoll (Pan), an enigmatic femme fatale, against Randolph (Dougherty), an ironjawed CIA agent. Their ambiguous maneuvers jockey with Simone (Joyce F. Liu), a flighty chanteuse who seeks transit papers from the corrupt Belgian Ambassador (Frank Simons).

Chua aims to draw on the genre without stooping to kitsch. That’s certainly admirable, and director Kevin Cochran pulls out the stops in tandem with his designers. Leonard Ogden’s impressive set shifts from spare cabaret to a raked alley worthy of Fritz Lang, his period costumes are lush, and David Darwin’s shadowy lighting carries the evocative standard.

Pan and Dougherty make intelligent foils, she underplaying the internal conflicts, he suggesting Fred MacMurray with more depth. Although Liu falls prey to her dim-bulb character, she has some keen moments with Simons, who inhales his post-Sydney Greenstreet archetype, and Sam Mak is competent in several functional roles.

Yet the script is better at appropriating cinematic tropes than making them meaningful. A critical plot point about twins is underdeveloped, the geopolitical elements don’t jell, and the romance is more schematic than affecting. Cochran’s ambitious staging also stumbles, with several jarring transitions dulling the reviewed performance. While “Film Chinois” has its merits, it’s finally heavier on style than substance.

-- David C. Nichols

“Film Chinois,” GTC Burbank, 1111-B W. Olive Ave., Burbank. 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays. $30. (818) 238-9998 or www.gtc.org. Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.