Dreams can be confusing, but stage plays shouldn't. The adaptation of Shakespeare's comedy presented by the Honolulu Theatre for Youth is more appropriately "A Midsummer Night's Muddle."

HTY artistic director Eric Johnson has adapted this one-hour version of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" for four actors. Guest-directed by Joe Sturgeon, the production aims to make the original play accessible to fourth- to sixth-graders. But the result lacks clarity even for an audience familiar with the play.

The original overlapping story lines and interwoven subplots don't fare well in this version, which cuts corners and complicates when it should simplify and open doors. Four major character groups are represented in the abridged script and not all of them succeed.

The Royal characters are essentially cut from the play, with Theseus existing only as an amplified offstage voice. The Fairies are reduced to puppets — Oberon and Titania as large masks trailing yards of fabric and Puck as a ventriloquist dummy with a green face. The Rustics begin and end the play, but generally disappear from the middle.

All this throws the strongest emphasis on the Mortals — two mismatched pairs who spend the night falling in and out of magically-induced love. Unfortunately, the magical elements are the least successful part of the show.

We catch a glimpse of Bottom getting his donkey ears through a hole in a backdrop. His love scene with Titania is diminished by her appearing — for all practical purposes — as a talking window curtain.

Although it's difficult to follow, the show looks good. Glowing paper lanterns illuminate the stage and the audience, with simple tree silhouettes along the rear of the playing area and at the back of the house. Trunks, lanterns and a couple of tapestry backdrops complete the picture.

The show has a big finish as the Rustics stage their version of the Pyramus and Thisbe love tragedy — which never fails to get laughs with its naive overstatement. But in this version, the Rustics get an encore — a morality play about keeping the ocean clean: "Haddock, Fish of Denmark."

Company actors Emily Hare, Kimo Kaona, Pomai Lopez and Nathan Mark get a good physical workout from their quick changes in quadruple roles, sometimes with actors handing off a character in midscene to take on another part.

But the final effect is a bit like running the original play through a blender. The parts that don't fly out the top whirl about with remarkable speed and — when it's done — it's hard to separate your Flute from your Hermia or your Puck from your Bottom.

Joseph T. Rozmiarek has been reviewing theater since 1973.