`Dream' Interpretation Stellar cast adds comic madness to lush, over-the-top 'Midsummer'
Purists will quibble, but ``William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream'' is a playful, sexy piece of work -- just what the Bard might have conjured up for a movie adaptation of his beloved spring-fever comedy.

The film is over the top -- and willfully so. In director-writer Michael Hoffman's version, opening today at Bay Area theaters, even the visual lushness is larkish, a bit zany. From its setting in the romantic, glowing Tuscan countryside that shifts to the grand dream sequence in a magic forest of deep shadows and strange goings-on, this film is a visual tour de force to brighten eyes.

And the delicious cast weaves its own spell.

As might be expected, Kevin Kline steals the show with his hearty gifts for comedy. He plays Nick Bottom the Weaver, one of the ``rude mechanicals,'' who stages a play within the play and winds up in fair queen Titania's (Michelle Pfeiffer) swinging bower.

Kline, a Shakespearean veteran, has that flourish, that golden touch. In his glorious way of overdoing it -- turning the very notion of acting into farce -- he embodies a supreme comic madness that is audacious yet embracing. One can hardly wait to see what surprise he'll spring next.

And the entire ensemble is impressive, energetic, alive with sensu ality.

Michelle Pfeiffer plays it regal, pouty and come-hither as Titania. Her seduction of Bottom, turned to an ass under the spell of Puck (Stan ley Tucci with horns and impish grin), is riotous. In her bower, smitten by the donkeyish weaver (Puck's work, of course), she coos in lovely sultriness while the randy Bottom grows buck teeth and donkey ears and suddenly turns furry. He's giddy at being with a dream woman in a dream sexual situation. Shakespeare's language is a punch bowl of double entendre, and these actors enjoy delivering every loaded word.

A real surprise is the sly comic depth of Calista Flockhart's bicycle- riding Helena, miles from ``Ally McBeal.'' This lovelorn woman is frail yet determined, and Flockhart sparkles in the role as she pursues her true love, Demetrius (Christian Bale of ``Velvet Goldmine'' and ``Little Women'').

Rupert Everett is imperious as Oberon, the jealous fairy king, and Tucci's Puck is amusingly tweaky as he keeps messing up his missions to drop magic nectar into lovers' eyes. Hermia (Anna Friel) is supposed to marry Demetrius, but she loves Lysander (Dominic West). Things get so mixed up under the spell of love that it's a romantic free-for-all, heedless of moral imperatives.

Shot in Italy, the opening sequences set a rich romantic tone. And the movie's great centerpiece, the otherworldly Magic Forest, looks so lush and dreamy it seems a vision of some pre-Raphaelite fantasy. The Edenesque forest was created from real trees and flowers and shot at the famed Cinecitta studios in Rome.

Purists will have a ball figuring out what was excised from the play to bring the film under two hours.

But they'll have to let their hair down a bit to appreciate the clever pruning Hoffman has accomplished without forfeiting the play's heart. This dream is one that means to have fun. And the music -- a mix of arias sung by Renee Fleming, Marcello Giordani, Luciano Pavarotti and Cecilia Bartoli as well as orchestral pieces -- is to sigh for.