If Shakespeare's English sometimes challenges your linguistic aptitude, don't worry, the production of A Midsummer Night's Dream is only about half in Shakespearean English. Well, maybe worry a little bit, because the other half is a polyglot of seven Indian and Sri Lankan languages. Don't be surprised if you spend the first minutes of the production at the Curran Theatre vainly scanning the proscenium arch for supertitles. It certainly helps to arrive knowing the plot, which is already something of a miasma of gods and mortals, dreams and reality, fairies and rustics. And if you don't know your Puck from your Bottom, a detailed cheat sheet is considerately provided along with the Playbill.

Actually, this cultural mashup makes for a fairly intriguing evening, but it's not the stuff of mass-market theater — and Best of Broadway is the closest thing we have to that. It's probably the kind the production that would be better off playing a couple of nights as part of a Cal Performances season rather than doing the eight-a-week grind for nearly a month to subscribers awaiting The Drowsy Chaperone. Give credit to Carole Shorenstein Hays and company for straying from the commercially comfortable, a risk that was all too apparent in the swathes of empty seats following the intermission on opening night.

This Dream was commissioned in 2004 by the Indian branch of the British Council, the UK's public diplomacy and cultural organization, and London-based director Tim Supple traveled to India and Sri Lanka to build, design, and cast the production from the talents of those countries. After debuting in New Delhi in 2006, it played several more Indian cities before moving to the UK, where the production has toured extensively. The SF run marks its North American debut.

This is definitely not any sort of Bollywood rendering of Shakespeare's romantic comedy, and the production design has an intentionally tattered, low-tech look. The main set piece is a stage-wide scaffold made out of what could be bamboo and covered with strategically torn fabric that provides for exits and entrances, and helps set moods as it captures the shifting lights and their colors. The costumes range from modest traditional Indian wear to bits and pieces that could have been collected at whatever is the Indian version of Old Navy. (Maybe it's Old Navy.) The specialty costumes, such as Bottom's donkey outfit, are all about looking homemade.

There may be a rhyme and reason as to why certain passages are in English and others in an Indian dialect, but that goes beyond my glossological skills. It is interesting to note, though, how the tone of Indian-accented English — that familiar sing-song cadence — seems inherently non-threatening, which can disappear when the cast is speaking in Hindi, Tamil, Malayalam, or Bengali. Maybe it developed from the Raj, and an expediency in lowering the guard of the English occupiers.

But there are no overt suggestions of politics in this production, just a drive to passionately retell a familiar story not only with words but Indian music, dance, some acrobatics, and a scene that involves the biggest elastic band you've likely ever encountered.

There are even times when you may not notice that, even occasionally in the middle of a passage, the language may change several times. The emotions are clear enough, and whatever the language — if you get into the right rhythms — you can surf the words as if they were waves. Each one is different, but they are all headed to the same shore.

A Midsummer Night's Dream will run at the Curran Theatre through June 1. Tickets are $35-$80. Call 512-7770 or go to www.shnsf.com.