Will the Bard still be boffo at the box office when audiences, fed on the fantasy of ''Shakespeare in Love'' are confronted with the playwright's own fantasies - in the language that turned their mind to mush when they tried to read it in school?

''A Midsummer Night's Dream,'' a star-studded interpretation of William Shakespeare's wacky look at love and magic, may provide some answers.

Shakespeare is always a challenge, but it's a lot easier to digest when delivered by savvy pros like Kevin Kline and interpreted with a fiercely mainstream whimsy by the likes of director Michael Hoffman.

It also doesn't hurt to toss in a lot of sparkling fairy dust in the form of Michelle Pfeiffer, Calista Flockhart, Rupert Everett and Stanley Tucci. Not all of them master ''Dream,'' but they all at least add a lot of glamour to this production.

''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is still the real deal when it comes to Elizabethan English. But like ''William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet'' - which injected new life into the words by giving them a rock 'n' roll spin and setting - ''A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is determined to make this Shakespeare mainstream-audience friendly.

The ''Midsummer Night's Dream'' story remains essentially the same, though director Hoffman has chosen a fresh locale, turn of the century Italy.

That's where we meet our lovers, who are destined to be the playthings of battling forest fairies.

Hermia (Anna Friel) loves Lysander (Dominic West) but is being forced by her father to marry Demetrius (Christian Bale), with whom Helena (Ms. Flockhart) is obsessed.

Hermia and Lysander decide on a nighttime elopement through the forest, but they're pursued by Helena, Demetrius and - little do they know - the fairies who inhabit the woods.

Meantime, the rustic weaver Bottom (Kevin Kline) and a troop of amateur thespians also head for the woods to rehearse a play they wish to perform before the local Duke (David Strathairn).

All of these mortals (yes, this is the Shakespeare work that contains the line ''What fools these mortals be'') become the playthings in a battle between the fairy king Oberon (Everett) and his queen, Titania (Michelle Pfeiffer).

Oberon dispatches his impish sidekick Puck (Stanley Tucci) to use a magic love potion on his queen so that she'll fall in love with the first thing she sees when she awakes.

Mistakes lead to a hilariously jumbled love quadrangle among Hermia, Demetrius, Lysander and Helena.

But Puck also manages to hit his mark when he turns Bottom into a donkey just as Titania awakes to fall in love with him.

It's one of Shakespeare's wilder tales, and director Hoffman certainly works some wild scenes - including a little mud wrestling.

Kline is in good form as the over-the-top Bottom, Tucci is a devilish Puck and Everett is a brooding Oberon.

Ms. Flockhart is enthusiastic as Helena and Ms. Pfeiffer hold her own but seems to be straining a bit as Titania.

Mixed performances and uneven pacing are not enough to make this dream a nightmare, though. This is still a fairly breezy, if not necessarily consistent, ''Midsummer Night's Dream.''