Director Tina Landau professes inspiration from the nature of dreams for her big-budget production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Princeton's McCarter Theatre, in a co-production moving to Millburn, N.J.'s Paper Mill Playhouse. The nearly three-hour show, featuring the "pop-folk-rock" trio GrooveLily, leaves one wondering if Landau wasn't dreaming of staging a musical instead.

While I left wanting to hear more GrooveLily—this is so much a concert that I expected tables of overpriced T-shirts in the lobby, maybe a whiff of pot in the Princeton parking lot—I also exited wondering what happened to Shakespeare's play.

Much of the script is sung, drawing out what's normally a fast-paced comedy, and drowned out by a lethal combination of concert-level volume and unreliable microphones. By the long first act's end, when fairy king Oberon's simple directive to mischievous Puck to undo his magical manipulations becomes the huge production number "All Shall Be Well," Landau's intentions are clear: This isn't a play with music, but music saddled with a play.

The most effective blend of music and text comes when GrooveLily leaves their high-tech platforms to join the troupe of "mechanicals" rehearsing a play for Duke Theseus' wedding day. Valerie Vigoda, Brendan Milburn and Gene Lewin still play music, but without concert-level amplification. Lea DeLaria plays Bottom like an androgynous Ralph Kramden, Demond Green hilariously becomes a miniskirted Thisbe, and Stephen Payne's Peter Quince, their director, swigs from a flask. Their play-within-the-play relies so much on music, however, that it becomes tedious.

Shakespeare's royal mortals are colorless not only in Michael Krass' ivory costumes in front of Louisa Thompson's white, sconce-pocked wall, but in their portrayals, though the mismatched lovers—James Martinez, Will Fowler, Stacey Sargeant and Brenda Withers—gain color once they escape to the forest.

Landau's dreams for Shakespeare's magical fairies stop at a vision of muscular, glitter-gelled, nearly naked men who rappel, bungee and dangle from a forest of silver posts, touching ground occasionally to sing and dance behind Guy Adkins' precociously campy Puck. The fairy leaders—Jay Goede as Oberon, Ellen McLaughlin as Titania—fade into black in comparison.

Much of this Midsummer is undeniably fun, but Landau's vision remains fractured, a compilation of intriguing ideas (much like individual songs) that don't seem to serve a larger purpose (i.e., the story). The production leads back to GrooveLily, sleeping at their instruments as we found them hours ago, as if it all was their dream. In a way, it was—much more than Shakespeare's, anyway.

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM , Through April 16 (McCarter Theatre), April 19-May 21 (Paper Mill Playhouse), 91 University Pl., Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787 or www.mccarter.org