Among the French artist Marc Chagall's many paintings is a "Midsummer Night's Dream" that would baffle any Shakespeare buff. On the cartoonish canvas, a giraffe-faced man hugs a woman in a bridal dress. Bottom and Titania, maybe? A devil-red pixie flits in the background. Robin Goodfellow, perhaps? And the clown with the pointy hat? That's anyone's guess.

Director Dan McCleary's new professional staging of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for the Tennessee Shakespeare Company at Poplar Pike Playhouse takes many cues, and a few miscues, from the modernist painter.

Set designer Bob Phillips frames the stage in a bright, fauvist jungle of color, and when Shakespeare's mixed-up, muddled-up, shook-up lovers emerge from their midnight ramblings amidst the fairies, they're streaked with colors as if the forest itself had been made of wet paint.

It's a moment of rare thematic focus in a production that, like the Chagall painting, has maybe a little too much going on.

Though beautifully crafted by all the artists involved, parts of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" don't mesh. Bruce Bui's artful costumes have an "Arabian Nights" flavor. The changeling child, a cause of tension between Oberon and Titania, resembles the blue-skinned Hindu god Krishna. The live musicians, led by Memphis Symphony concertmaster Susanna Perry Gilmore, perform a zesty soundtrack of minor-keyed gypsy airs.

From France to Romania to the Middle East to India, the production certainly takes viewers on a multi-cultural voyage, but not, precisely, to that crepuscular, otherworldly place between wake and sleep.

What's missing through most of McCleary's aggressively staged production -- where Johnny Lee Davenport's thundering Oberon shakes the ceiling tiles, and Tony Molina Jr.'s delightfully comedic Bottom is like an armchair quarterback turned thespian -- is old-fashioned, joy-soaked lyricism and heartfelt love that one remembers as essential in a Shakespeare romance.

McCleary's lovers don't ache, yearn or wile in any internal, meaningful way. They grapple. They fling themselves around the stage, pile atop each other, and often look like participants in a game of Twister.

The actors come into the audience so often that there's no chance you'll be dozing off for a "Dream" of your own. McCleary is a real Shakespeare director in the sense that he engages his audience with everything in his theatrical toolbox; makes you feel almost like a participant in his show.

This "Midsummer" remains thoroughly and often uproariously entertaining, if not esthetically unified. It's a highly caffeinated "Dream" that makes audience members feel as wired when they leave as when they sat down. Iambic pentameter doesn't often have that effect on people.

'A Midsummer Night's Dream'

The Tennessee Shakespeare Company production continues through Oct. 25 at Poplar Pike Playhouse, 7653 Poplar Pike at Germantown High School. Shows are 7 p.m. Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays and 2 p.m. Sundays Tickets are $24-$36. Call 759-0604. Online at tnshakespeare.org.