NEW YORK, NY.- “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Shakespeare’s sylvan comic fantasy about mischief-making fairies and enchanted lovers, is such gossamer entertainment that it’s always a jolt to be reminded, near the start of the play, why the smitten young couple Hermia and Lysander flee to the forest in the first place.

It’s because Hermia’s father, Egeus, one of Shakespeare’s many dreadful patriarchs, forbids her to marry Lysander. He insists that she wed Demetrius, a suitor whom she does not love.

“As she is mine,” Egeus says in Carl Cofield’s stylish production for the Classical Theater of Harlem, “I may dispose of her: which shall be either with this gentleman” — Demetrius, that is — “or, according to our law, unto her death.”

During Sunday’s opening-night performance, the mention of a death sentence for Hermia drew a gasp from the crowd: Ancient barbarism had intruded on a scene glittering with Harlem Renaissance elegance. (The set is by Christopher and Justin Swader, costumes by Mika Eubanks.)

But that father-daughter moment is about as serious as Cofield’s staging gets. In the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater at Marcus Garvey Park, fun is the main point. And if this free “Midsummer” doesn’t deliver as much across-the-board delight as you may expect from the Classical Theater of Harlem, it does have a charismatic drama stirrer in Mykal Kilgore’s Puck, sprinkling magic for the fairy king, Oberon (a sympathetic Victor Williams).

There is also a giggle-inducing gaggle of rude mechanicals, who put on the adorable show within the show. Comedian Russell Peters is billed as the star of “Midsummer,” playing one of them: Nick Bottom, the weaver whom Puck transfigures into an ass, and with whom the ensorcelled fairy queen, Titania (Jesmille Darbouze, not given enough to do), falls in love. Peters, however, is scheduled to be absent from much of the run.

On opening night, Jaylen Eashmond — Peters’ understudy, fresh out of New York University’s graduate acting program — played Bottom, and proved an endearing comic match for two of the company’s funniest regulars: Allen Gilmore as Peter Quince, the carpenter, and Carson Elrod as Tom Snout, the tinker. This band of rude mechanicals revels in silliness, and thrives.

As for the lovers, each is portrayed appealingly — Hermia (Ra’Mya Latiah Aikens) and Lysander (played on Sunday by Marcus Fitzpatrick, the understudy), who are eloping through the forest; Demetrius (Brandon Carter), who follows them on a baby-blue bicycle; and adoring Helena (Noah Michal), who pursues Demetrius even as he spurns her.

What’s missing is a palpable sense of the relationships among them before fairy spells shift the dynamics. Without that underpinning, the comedy is forced, as in the eruption between Hermia and Helena, dear longtime friends, which seems no more than a catfight.

With a song list that includes Duke Ellington, Lionel Hampton, Benny Goodman, the Gershwins and the show’s own composer, Frederick Kennedy, this production sows music and dance throughout. (Choreography is by Dell Howlett.) Surprisingly, given the set’s nightclub look, those elements are less prominent than they often are in Classical Theater of Harlem shows.

But late on opening night, at the end of the Fourth of July weekend, the serendipity of outdoor theater in a busy city provided an extra flourish. As soon as Demetrius finished pledging his heart to Helena, a single firework went off somewhere nearby. For an instant, above the stage roof, the night sky dazzled.

A Midsummer Night’s DreamThrough July 28 in the Richard Rodgers Amphitheater at Marcus Garvey Park, Manhattan; cthnyc.org. Running time: 1 hour 45 minutes.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.