Getting Alex Clifton to direct A Midsummer Night's Dream in the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre is a bit like asking Celine Dion to belt out a power ballad - you can be 100% confident they will rise to the occasion magnificently.
But while Clifton may be on familiar territory considering his past track record, he does anything but tread water with a production of Shakespeare's eternally loved fantasy comedy that pushes boundaries both in terms of character and staging.
One of the early striking innovations comes when you realise Bianca Stephens as Lysander is not doing the usual cross dressing much beloved of so many productions of the Bard - Lysander here is a woman in love with Hermia (Vanessa Schofield).
Frankly this is a stroke of genius because it overcomes one of the mysteries of the original play - namely why, in less enlightened times, the ruling Theseus (Christopher Wright) and Hippolyta (Meriel Scholfield) plus Hermia's father Egeus (Richard Pepper) are so against this union and so much in favour of Hermia marrying Demetrius (Fred Lancaster) when the latter and Lysander are of equal status.
It also felt such a highly appropriate development in the week when Chester was brought so magnificently to life with the latest Pride festival at the weekend.
The catalysts of chaos in all this are, of course, the magical fairies who love nothing better than to meddle in human affairs of the heart led by Puck (Thomas Richardson managing to be both commanding and mischievous in equal measure) who casts a spell over the lovers which succeeds in leaving the much maligned Helena (a wonderfully wronged, baffled and distraught performance from Emily Johnstone) out in the cold.
The other major storyline in Midsummer Night concerns the merry if incompetent band of amateur performers who decide to stage a play for the forthcoming nuptials of Theseus and Hippolyta and it is here Clifton lets his artistic ambitions and imagination off the leash completely to hysterical effect.
Every moment we spend in the presence of this hopeless theatre company is an absolute delight right from the word go when Clifton once again messes with gender but this time to great comic effect by turning the play's director Peter Quince into Petra Quince.
In this role, Natalie Grady (so stunning playing a female version of Mark Antony in the Storyhouse season's Julius Caesar) gives an engagingly exasperated, hand-wringing and wryly humorous performance which starts with her correcting every character as they stubbornly continue to refer to her as Peter!
But there is no doubt at all which cast member stole the hearts of the audience as Adam Keast deliberately and skilfully hammed it up to perfection as the unflappably enthusiastic aspiring actor Nick Bottom, making the most of every absurd situation the character finds himself in - not least when he is magically transformed into appearing with the head of an ass.
It all leads to one of the funniest sequences I have ever seen in a theatrical production as the makeshift company stage their performance of the tragical comedy of Pyramus and Thisbe with hilarious off-stage directions and sound effects from Quince, Christopher Staines giving the best portrayal of a wall you will ever see and Keast treating us to the most prolonged, over the top death scene imaginable.
With Clifton lacing the scene with bawdy humour, it led into a musical climax that had the entire audience clapping along and cheering a production which sadly only has a few more days to go before it comes to an end. Try your very best to get along between now and Sunday if you can - you won't regret it.
