The subtitle says it all in "The Power of Desire: A Midsummer Nightmare." A rewrite of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Reb Beau Allen, the production explores the original comedy's dark side by setting it in "The Forest," a nightclub for erotic fantasies. In this context, Titania is a cross-dressing club hostess and Puck is a junkie.

Nevertheless, Shakespeare's original characters (the Royals, the Rustics, the Lovers, and the Fairies) are rescued from their folly, not by magic, but through the power of love. Salvation bubbles up through the grittiness.

Theseus (played by Allen) sets the play in motion, but in this version he's a gangland godfather, dispensing justice with bullets from a handgun. In the opening scene, he executes his rival and, lifting a scene from Shakespeare's "Richard III," wins Hippolyta's promise of marriage over the corpse of her former lover.

Much of the play parallels the sequence of the original, but in the absence of poetry, visual representations carry the weight.

It begins with a deejayed 30-minute club pre-show; cast members mingle and dance a little. An obviously stoned Helena (Helena Chao), stalks an evasive Demetrius (Joshua Weldon), while Puck (Patrick Pascua) works the fringe of the crowd, generously sharing his ample supply of little white pills.

When the action picks up, a sexually ambiguous but omnivorous Oberon (Jonathan Reyn) distributes love potions to confuse the mortals, causing Titania (played in high drag and with glorious abandon by Coco Chandelier) to fall in love with Bottom (Brandon Hagio, with stapled-on donkey ears).

What does Allen have that Shakespeare didn't? For one, a desire to shock us with perverse humor. Shakespeare wouldn't have said, "Honey, that STD you gave me last week — it's back!"

He's also aimed to make the action relevant by using a contemporary idiom, making the passion dangerous and raw by removing 400 years of reverence.

So congratulations to Allen for a startling concept and script, to director Paul Cravath and his cast for another gutsy presentation, and to the dance and fight choreographers and tech crew for making a basement production look as good as this one does. This "Midsummer Nightmare" is never boring.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater performances in Hawai'i since 1973.