"Lord, what fools these mortals be," says Puck, and giving consideration to the contemporary city, nation and world around us, who can disagree?

But there's at least one pleasant exception: Ted Pappas, artistic director of Pittsburgh Public Theater, shows himself canny indeed, giving us a lively, warm-hearted "Midsummer Night's Dream" just when we need it, in the pit of this discouraging, bone-chilling time.

"Midsummer" is a perfectly constituted antidote, with its mix of pratfall humor, romantic poetry and tart commentary, plus an extensive catalog of the varieties of human folly, all softened by compassionate humanity. The Public may fall short on the poetry (it even prunes some of it), but it raises the comedy to delicious heights. Providing further warmth is the adaptable, colorful James Noone set and Gabriel Berry lighting, which together send off occasional sparks of magic.

But mainly, there's laughter, and for this we can first thank John Ahlin's Bottom -- the character named Bottom, I mean, although that implied pun is perfectly in keeping with Shakespeare's ribald mix of high poetry and low humor. Kudos to Mr. Pappas for not shying away from the bawdy jokes (he cuts a few, but who doesn't?), realizing that such humor is warming (and human) as well.

Back to Mr. Ahlin, whom we've seen here before as the clowns in "The Tempest" and "Much Ado About Nothing." He begins almost pedantically, a Bottom who's not such a fool as sometimes pictured, then gradually develops his unconscious vanity to dizzying heights without ever proving tiresome, as Shakespeare's clowns can be. And he saves the best for last, an endless catalog of varieties of suicide that had me choking with laughter.

Mr. Ahlin is chiefly abetted in humor by his fellow "rude mechanicals" and the four young lovers. The former are Alex Coleman, Daniel Krell, James Fitzgerald, Jeremy Czarniak and Tony Bingham, who are at their best in the "Pyramus and Thisbe" farce. They also double as rather addled fairies, exemplifying Mr. Pappas' focus on robust comedy rather than atmosphere or poetry.

That focus extends to the lovers, who never call much on our sympathy but certainly incite mirth. Lindsey Kyler's Hermia (a prissy princess) and Beth Wittig's Helena (a gawky klutz) are nicely contrasting, while J.T. Arbogast and Lucas Near-Verbrugghe provide matching energy as Demetrius and Lysander -- or is it the other way around? No, that's a joke, based on Shakespeare's joke of the two young men's similarity. Mr. Near-Verbrugghe is the one with the funniest physical flourishes.

In fact both groups, and the production as a whole, are energized by physical commitment great enough to keep the audience warm as well. This is certainly true of Harris Doran's slyly subversive Puck, a sardonic master of misrule.

With the poetic plaints of the lovers downplayed, Shakespeare's lush word painting is left to the fairy king and queen, Oberon and Titania, played by David Whalen and Bianca Amato, who have but one traditional fairy attendant (sweet Meggie Booth in the performance I saw). They make a very handsome pair, doubling also as the mortal rulers, Theseus and Hippolyta. As my dentist told me in advance, she has fabulous abs -- and he looks pretty fine, too. They strike occasional amatory sparks. But except for some flashes in her "forgeries of jealousy" speech, their poetic fires are generally banked, leaving them mainly to preside as amiable deities, both fairy and mortal.

I have some quibbles with an emphasis here or a missed opportunity there, such as you'd expect from someone who's seen this play 15 or 20 times over the years, from here to London and back, along with its several movie versions, and also taught it many times to college students. For one example, I really miss the cut Theseus-Hippolyta hunting sequence, because it signals their growing amity, resolves Theseus' reading of the law at the play's start and fleshes out some of the play's themes.

But that's specialist stuff.

More important, this "Midsummer" redresses the misadventures of Eddie Gilbert's 1998 Public Theater version, with its teenage fairies and oddly shackled Bottom (the brilliant Heath Lamberts). Even I will take comedy over poetry just about every time, especially in bleak mid-winter.

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