"Merry and tragical! Tedious and brief! That is, hot ice and wondrous strange snow." - W. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The hot and the wondrous weren't exactly visible. But there was no dearth of ice and snow one fateful day last January.

That's when Deb Alley, artistic director of the Illinois Shakespeare Festival, and Lauren Lowell, head of ISU's School of Theatre costume department, found themselves on the road to Chicago and a midwinter night's freeze.

At that point, the decision had been made to uproot the 2009 festival's plum offering, "A Midsummer Night's Dream," from its Elizabethan/Athenian moorings - all the better to re-pot it in "more contemporary setting."

But where? And how contemporary?

"When we started talking about it back in December, we didn't know what we wanted do with it," recalls Howell, who'd be designing the show's costumes.

She produced a series of design sketches from 13 different eras that would support the requisite midsummer setting - among them an art nouveau look.

Meanwhile, the show's sound designer, Joe Court, was playing around with sultry concepts, too, including one that "landed on blues, jazz and swing music."

Between the art nouveau and the blues-jazz, the concept seemed to be moving toward the '30s. Then Lowell and Alley found themselves headed north to Chicago that day deep-frozen January day, and suddenly balmy thoughts of southward locales began surfacing.

"Maybe it was because we were so cold." recalls Howell. "But with the south being warm and very representative of what the festival feels like in the summer - humid and steamy - we found ourselves pointing toward New Orleans."

Presto: Tonight's festival-opening performance of "Dream" will see Puck, Titania and the gang getting down-and-funky in bayou country, circa the 1930s.

Cajun style

Athens becomes New Orleans. The enchanted forest morphs into the enchanted bayou. And Howell's meticulous costumes reflect the play's three classes: Southern aristocracy, Cajun working class and Creole fairyland.

All to the beat of Court's musical soundscape, which includes Satchmo, Calloway and some foot-stompin' zydeco.

What cool-cats these mortals be?

As the show's guiding hand, Alley has seen many a transposed Shakespeare play in her theatrical lifetime, including a number at Ewing Manor.

"I'd be naïve to think I was the first director to set this in New Orleans, but this is the first one I've ever seen," Alley says. "It's a place of great diversity and separate worlds, where lots of cultures come together."

When they collide, she says, "the same things happen."

And the aural spectacle of the Bard's "very metered rhyme couplets" being delivered in Cajun, Creole and Southern genteel accents isn't as bizarre as it sounds.

"There is the theory," notes Alley, "that Southern dialects are very close to what Elizabethan English might have sounded like." And, it's true, she says: "The dialect actually enhances the language."

Howell's costuming has also taken flight via the update/relocation, with her Southern gentry garbed in '30s haute couture-inspired gowns and sporting attire awash in linen and pastel colors.

The working class Quince, Bottom, et al, are decked in roughhewn overalls, while the fairyland is treated like Dorothy's sensory-tweaked passage from monochrome Kansas to Technicolor Oz: "Rich textures and bright, vivid colors providing a contrast between the two worlds."

The fairies' look involves a design motif in which the characters "steal things from the real world and wear them in ways that aren't exactly right," like a pocket watch as a necklace.

All told, both Alley and Howell think this reconfigured bit of summer magic should honor the Bard's original intent by, as Howell says, "giving it a new perspective that makes the story fresh and exciting again."

Not that they have to work too hard to do that: "His plays are so timeless," she notes, "that they are relevant to any period."

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At a glance

What: 32nd Illinois Shakespeare Festival

When: Tonight through Aug. 9 (7:30 p.m. Tue.-Thu. and Sun., 8 p.m. Fri.-Sat.; grounds open 5 p.m.)

Where: Ewing Manor, Towanda Avenue and Emerson Street, Bloomington

Tickets: Adults, $20-$40; students/seniors, $16-$36

Box office numbers: (309) 438-2535 (daytime), (309) 828-9814 (performance nights)

Web site: www.thefestival.org

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The plays

A Midsummer Night's Dream

• Dates: Tonight, Sunday, Tuesday; July 2, 5, 9, 11, 17, 19, 23, 25, 30; Aug. 2, 4, 8

• Comedy tonight?: You expected high drama, maybe, with a working stiff named Bottom who winds up with the head of an ass?

• The rub: To flee an arranged marriage, a young lass runs off to an enchanted forest with her true love, her would-be fiancée in pursuit and his would-be amour stalking him. Then the fairies show up.

• You can quote them: "What visions have I seen! Methought I was enamoured of an ass!"

Scapin

• Dates: Friday, Saturday, Wednesday; July 3, 10, 12, 18, 21, 24, 29, 31; Aug. 6, 9

• Comedy tonight?: Take one look at the photo accompanying this story and you tell us.

• The rub: Not da Bard; but Moliere, as adapted by Bill Irwin/Mark O'Donnell. To flee an arranged marriage (where have we heard this before?), Octave turns to his hustling servant Scapin, master of the big fat lie and artfully turned scam.

• You can quote them: "The schemer's boogie, please."

Richard III

• Dates: July 16, 22, 26, 28; Aug. 1, 5, 7

• Comedy tonight?: Only if you find drowning your own bro' in a keg of malmsey a scream.

• The rub: To gain the throne of his soon-to-expire brother, tricky Dick commits fratricide and jails his own nephews. Then he gets really ambitious.

• You can quote them: "Now is the winter of our discontent …"

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The goodies

• Music nights (free): Jazz man Glenn Wilson & Co. is back for the second year from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays in the Ewing courtyard. On Wednesdays, a new series featuring visiting contemporary and pop performers will be offered, same time and location.

• Green Shows (free): The pre-show tradition continues with its evergreen mix of entertainment, combat demonstrations, picnicking and more.

• Post-play discussions (free): Talks with cast and crew will be abetted by a new addition - ice cream socials! The sweet mix will follow "Scapin" July 21, "Richard III" July 28, and "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Aug. 4.

• Shakespeare Alive! (free): The kid-friendly Bard condensations return with a 40-minute digest of "The Tempest," at 10 a.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays in the Ewing courtyard. Reservations required at (309) 438-3334.

• Backstage tours ($5): Go behind the festival scenes at 5:30 p.m. every Friday and Saturday.

• Design discussions/tours ($5): Talks on how the technical aspects of the festival are achieved will be given in the courtyard at 5:30 p.m. July 1, 5, 12, 19, 22 and 26.