According to La Jolla Playhouse artistic director Christopher Ashley, his current production of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” was conceived in a dream of his own. Though it is indeed a feverish dream, the images are extraordinary, and result in one of the most magical “Dreams” in this writer’s experience. Ashley’s other inspiration was to collaborate with composer Mark Bennett, who calls upon Felix Mendelssohn’s familiar and not-so-familiar incidental music for the play and scores it and his own original music for members of the San Diego Youth Symphony (plus alumni and four members of American Federation of Musicians, Local 325). One particularly familiar section of Mendelssohn’s work is hilariously choreographed for the ensemble of fairies/house servants and the acting company, and when everything returns from topsy-turvy in the forest near Athens and the couples are all properly matched up again, we hear the familiar strains of the “Wedding March.” Meanwhile, to the story: Egeus (Jonathan McMurtry) picks Demetrius (Sean Mahon) to be his daughter Hermia’s (Amelia Campbell) husband. She, however, prefers Lysander (Tim Hopper). At the Athenian Court, King Theseus (Daniel Oreskes, who also plays fairy king Oberon) decrees that Hermia will obey her father’s command; she has two choices then: to die or to abjure the company of men for the rest of her life. In siding with Egeus, Theseus incurs the wrath of his fiancée, Hippolyta (Charlayne Woodard, who also plays Titania, queen of the fairies). During the time given her to decide between death and the convent, Hermia and Lysander flee to the forest to be wed at his aunt’s house. They confide in Hermia’s friend Helena (J. Smith-Cameron), who follows them into the forest with Demetrius, whom she loves. Everything is turned upside down (literally, in this production) in the forest as our quartet of lovers collides with the warring king and queen of the fairies, Oberon’s minion, Puck (Martin Moran, who also plays the court master of revels, Philostrate), and a troupe of local “Mechanicals” (working class blokes) rehearsing “The Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe” to perform at court. Oberon plays a bollixed up trick on all, including Titania, but the spells are all reversed and there’s a happy end to the confusion. The production is visually-compelling with marvelous costume designs by David C. Woolard, an apparently simple but wondrously fly-apart and adaptable scenic design by Neil Patel, lighting by Howell Binkley and sound by Leon Rothenberg, who manages through subtle miking to make everyone heard amongst the chaos. Basil Twist provides the puppetry that allows everything, including the onstage piano, to fly and be played upon upside down. Most wondrous of all, 20 members or alumni of the San Diego Youth Symphony, along with four union musicians compose the off-stage orchestra (orchestrations by Wayne Barker), an on stage ensemble, and the most exotic, flute-playing Changeling ever seen in a “Dream.” Wondrous indeed. The 22-member acting company is uplifted by the flying skills of Tatyana Petruk and acrobatics of various others including Ken Berkeley, a longtime performer at the Metropolitan Opera, and Matthew Cusick, also a Met performer as well as a veteran of Cirque du Soleil. The company speaks Shakespeare in inconstant style, and some overplay the histrionics, perhaps an intentional fever dream of bygone emoting. Astonishing performances are those of Martin Moran, who magically morphs from Philostrate to Puck and back again; the Bottom of Lucas Caleb Rooney; and the Changeling Child (here called the Indian Child) of 11-year-old Sara Kornfield Simpson, who while borne aloft on a pillow plays a lovely, note-perfect obbligato to First Fairy Amanda Naughton’s song, “You spotted snakes with double tongue.” “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” continues through Aug. 22 at 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Wednesdays; 8 p.m. Thursdays through Saturdays; 2 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays; and 7 p.m. Sundays at the Sheila and Hughes Potiker Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, 2910 La Jolla Village Drive. For more information, call www.lajollaplayhouse.org or (858) 550-1010.