I’d like to think that A Midsummer Nights Dream was a scandal in Elizabethan times. All that hot, sweaty summer loving… fairy kings and queens… teenage nobles competing for girlfriends… those lusty words of love.

It must have been hot and stinky down in the pit and not much better in the stalls. There’d have been heckling and swooning… and perhaps even jeers of outrage as the inconstant lovers “impeach their modesty” and succumb to the aphrodisiac purple flower’s juice.

On opening night in Paekākāriki, the heavens rain on Circle of Fifth’s production of Shakespeare’s magical romp – so we all jam and squeeze into the Memorial Hall with its rimu and flourescents.

No matter.

Somehow Shona Jaunas has once again drawn the Kāpiti Community into the excitement, the flamboyance, the tricksy poetry and farce of the Bard. We love it. The audience cheering the players on… applauding every exit… hooting with glee.

In Shakespeare’s own words: “It goes right off!”

Gina Goad is triumphant as Titania – part lusty bar-room wench (but Regal, mind you), and part Zsa-Zsa Gabor in Green Acres; funny, physical and powerful. Billy McGrath is a worthy and vaguely devilish Oberon.

The Lovers too: Seth Leslie the confident-teen-idol Lysander; a stunning turn from Sophie Allen as Hermia, the flappy-motormouth-pouty-princess with a fiery temper and a good right hook; Jessie McKenzie the whining-how-is-this-happening-to-me Helena; and David Hobbis the nerdy-by-the-rules Demetrius. These are not easy roles to play, but they all play them very well indeed.

Frida Morley-Hall makes sense of Puck with her energetic dance-like physique and Buck Campbell swaggers as Theseus the blowhard. All the Fairies and Court characters are on song with the play. An excellent ensemble.

For me though – and for the audience tonight – the Oscar goes to the Rude Mechanicals and their insufferably tragic performance of Pyramus and Thisbe. They have us in fits from their first entrance.

Ben Wakefield’s Nick Bottom is hilarious and endearing – his timing and bodily contortions so Chaplinesque. Ben steals the show, but he pulls his fellow rustics into the heist so that it all feels seamless. His ass is perfect (and I mean that most sincerely) – I could see how Titania would fall for that ass… it’s the best ass ever!

Kate Nolan makes a very convincing chink in the wall and Selina Tuomey roars like a… well, a lion! Jack Freeman is no shrinking-wallflower of a Thisbe – no – (s)he’s as terrifying as a porcelain doll with a voiceful of nitrous oxide. Susie Pegler as Quince strives to keep the show on the road and Sally Stopforth is a delightful Starveling moon.

I’m tempted to go back tomorrow night to see the play again – at Campbell Park, under the trees, in the fading light of evening, magic hour – because it’s truly magic.

Best of all though, and this should never be underestimated, Shona Jaunas and her team actually understand the verse. They are true to Shakespeare throughout. Every couplet is performed, not just recited. Every aside leaves a rhyming cliff-hanger for the next scene.

“…by ten words, my Lord, it is too long,” says Philostrates to Theseus as they choose which play should entertain them.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare’s frolicking treatise on the muddle of being smitten, his hot and sexy theme of desire on summer nights, is never too long. Not by a thousand words.

Bravo. Encore. Such fun.

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