Created in India in the 2005-2006 season, Tim Supple's current production at the Curran Theatre isn't simply called "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The play's official title is "Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream," as if the bard is a Hollywood director plagued by insecurity, vanity and his own irrelevance. Fortunately for Shakespeare, but unfortunately for the production, the significance of his work makes him eternally relevant. But this also makes the titling choice very suspicious. After a few hundred years, it's safe to say that the Great Shake is more famous than, say, Gus Van Sant, so why would a production trade on an authorship that most theatre-going audience members are already aware of?

This almost universal awareness is the problem that plagues most current stagings of Shakespeare's works. The audience knows everything about them before the curtain is raised. We all fundamentally understand "A Midsummer Night's Dream" because we've already seen it. It could be said that this Elizabethan romantic comedy featuring four lusty youngsters has one of the most enduring plotlines in history.

Still, the familiarity we have with Shakespeare in both our conscious intellect and unconscious emotional experience should be all the more reason to leave him out of the title of his own play. At least, this is what one would think before watching the production. By the end, it's clear that the original "Midsummer Night's Dream" has very little to do with what Supple actually puts onstage. And even though many of the director's choices are interesting and inventive, they may leave audiences wondering where exactly Shakespeare's place in the production was-besides in the title billing.

It's not difficult to see why this play did so well in its tour through England and the United Kingdom, one of the marketplaces most heavily saturated with the good bard's work: Supple gave them a Shakespeare that wasn't a Shakespeare. A cross between soap opera and Cirque du Soleil, most of this play isn't even in English.

This linguistic difference is, however, one of the play's great triumphs. Production materials say that "the company speaks many languages-seven of which are on the stage in this show." The acting is so competent that regardless of the language spoken throughout the intricate plot shifts, the play is completely comprehensible. It's as if, in spite of the language barrier that threatens to keep us from our fellows in other countries, art can overcome.

What art cannot overcome is the giant prosthetic penis affixed to Nick Bottom's donkey costume. In this play, Bottom is a weaver in an amateur acting troupe who gets turned into an ass by Puck, a mischievous spirit. He is also the center of a circle of fairies who attach strings to his body and dance around him to symbolize something that remains obscure to the reviewer even now. It goes without saying that one of these strings is attached to the tip of the aforementioned giant prosthetic penis. This is just one example of the spoken word getting overwhelmed by incongruous choreographic excess. Others include a white plastic backdrop that is torn throughout the play's action, a drummer who bangs a bit too loudly to perform his function as an emotional soundtrack, and endless dance numbers that come out of nowhere.

It's a shame, too, because Shakespeare might have enjoyed hearing his work translated and interpreted by these skilled talents. If they hadn't added such unfortunate instances of performative overindulgence, he might have even been flattered to see his name added to the title.