Like The Homecoming, at Stratford's Swan Theatre at present, the Royal Shakespeare Company’s altogether delightful revival of A Midsummer Night’s Dream on the main stage next door transports us back to the 1960s. Beehive hairdos adorn the Motown-style girl singers belting out numbers supplied, in fine period pastiche, by composer Keith Clouston, to entertain the ducal court of Theseus (the superbly spoken Jo Stone-Fewings), with accompaniment from a sharp-suited beat group.

At the centre of the raffish assembly we find Hippolyta (Pippa Nixon) seated in her mink coat on a white Chesterfield that remains a focal point of this production.She is clearly far from happy about her forthcoming marriage to the Duke, about to be celebrated, he says — to a noticeable grimace from her — “With pomp, with triumph, and with revelling”. Her face drops a degree or two further when she hears her fiancé’s strict instruction to the mini-skirted Hermia (Matti Houghton) — which is to marry Demetrius (Alex Hassell), as her father Egeus (Kammy Darweish) says she must, or face death or entry to a convent.

With Women’s Liberation still a decade or more in the future — certainly in Athens! — is director Nancy Meckler planning to offer a preview of the feminist frays ahead in a reading of the play that might put a message ahead of merriment? Fortunately this is not to be. Hermia and her beloved Lysander (Nathaniel Martello-White) set off for the Athenian forest, followed by Demetrius and his doting Helena, and the scene is set, following the mismanaged distribution of love potions by the hippyishly clad Puck (Arsher Ali), for one of the funniest Dreams I have seen on the Stratford stage.

This one truly is a dream, the hilarious antics played out in a surreal landscape (designer Katrina Lindsay) bedecked by dozens of pendant kitchen chairs. The rulers of this fairyland are the Duke and his intended, now transformed into Oberon and Titania but seen returning to reality, putting on their court clothes, as morning breaks.

Now we are ready for the great triumph of this production, the closing Tragedy of Pyramus and Thisbe. Marc Wootton's Bottom — having already had us in stitches with his love scene in Titania’s fairy bower — leads the troupe of Rude Mechanicals in more brilliantly managed comedy, to which Michael Grady-Hall’s Flute/Thisbe also makes a major contribution. This is the second great feast of fun supplied here. The first comes in the forest fall-out of the young lovers, with Lucy Briggs-Owen, in a truly star turn, supplying comic perfection as the furious Helena — now with two besotted swains instead of none — convinced she is the victim of a conspiracy by her ‘friends’.

Continues until November 5. Tickets: www.rsc.org.uk or 0844 800 1110