Four half-naked lovers sling mud at one another, oblivious to the howling crowd as they slip and slide across the stage. This is how the Shakespeare Theatre Company interprets Puck’s line, “Lord, what fools these mortals be,” in its production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.”

The Shakespeare Theatre Company gave its performance in the Sidney Harman Hall in downtown D.C. The show featured original Shakespearian English but incorporated a modern aspect into the show through props and actors.. The characters used the surrounding props well to help the audience gauge their mood, which lightened the play’s renaissance humor.

The play follows four mixed-up lovers who lose themselves in an enchanted forest where they are entangled in the antics of a fairy king and queen bickering over a young Indian boy. Meanwhile, several laborers, including the comical, well-known Bottom, prepare the play, “Pyramus and Thisbe” in hopes that they will be chosen to perform at the reception of the royal wedding.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company made the play its own by creating a juxtaposition between the characters’ dialogue and dress. While the dialogue was original Shakespearian English, the costumes were variations of modern dress from early 1900’s English aristocratic styles to working class attire: one character even wore a military uniform.

The costumes of the fairies were particularly inventive. A far cry from Walt Disney’s Tinkerbell, these fairies wore dingy burlesque-style undergarments. The fairies appeared from trapdoors beneath the stage, all dressed alike as the workers upstage rehearsed their play. Each fairy came into her identity by donning clothes hanging on racks.

Though they weren’t flying, the fairies defied gravity with athletic acrobatics, tumbling and bouncing across the stage. They draped themselves over elevated chandeliers and climbed a rope with apparent ease, adding a light-heartedness to the show.

Perhaps the most comical part of the play came from the actors’ motions. When Hermia ranted about how unjust her father was being in forbidding her to love Lysander, she picked up stools and chairs, swinging them about. When Demetrius spurned the advances of Helena, he wielded a golf club at arm’s length, keeping her at bay. And when Helena despaired over Demetrius’s indifference to her, she ate a box of chocolates.

One of the funniest scenes involving the lovers amounted to mud-wrestling. Lysander and Demetrius, both of whom originally loved Hermia, were influenced by an enchanted flower, which caused them to love Hermia’s best friend Helena, who loves Demetrius but believes that both men are mocking her.

As the tangled lovers argue, Puck, an impish spirit who has been the cause of the lovers’ entanglement, increases the chaos by creating a mud puddle. As they grapple in the mud, much to the enjoyment of the audience, Puck sprayed the lovers with a hose – the spectators loved it.

The highest comedic point of the performance, however, was the workers’ play performed after the wedding of the royal couple and the finally untangled lovers. The interpretation of the wall was a man whose spread arms held cans dangling from strings.

Thisbe, the heroine, was played by a man, and was little more than a drag queen with a ridiculous pink, puffy dress, and make-up. The accompanying music on a record player was problematic and there were technical difficulties. Bottom flat-out refused to deliver his lines as Pyramus until the proper accompaniment sounded. When a lion chases Thisbe and Pyramus finds a red garment she left behind, he believes her dead and kills himself. Bottom’s portrayal of this scene was highly humorous and overdone. As he falls on the ground dead, his skirt rides up to reveal a garter on his thigh, ending the scene with a bang.

This rendition of a classic play was funny and enriching— it gives students who don’t always enjoy reading Shakespeare a chance to understand and appreciate the story.

The play will run at the Sidney Harman Hall until Dec. 30.