‘Now fair Hippolyta” . . . the first three words of A Midsummer Night’s Dream – addressed by Thomas Padden’s Theseus to a black member of Propeller’s cast, all-male as ever – establish at the outset that here is a production of Shakespeare’s lightest and loveliest of comedies that is blind to both colour and gender.

Blind, too, to conventional notions of what passes for feminine beauty, for Jonathan Livingstone, who plays the Amazon queen, is a big, beefy bloke who makes no attempt to disguise the fact, for all his female finery, including a rather stylish, jauntily worn hat.

Ditto Richard Frame who gives us a Hermia who might do rather well as an all-in wrestler. Later we observe just how well as she brawls with love rival Helena (Babou Ceesay, another black actor whose ‘fairness’ is often alluded to) in a fall-out as funny – no, funnier – than that of Cecily and Gwendolen in Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest.

Those familiar with Propeller’s work down the years, under the inspiring guidance of its long-time director Edward Hall, will be aware of the extra dimension of humour – sometimes, too, of pathos – that is added by the insistence on male actors only. Perhaps they will know as well how particularly suited their approach is to Dream, since this is a revival of a production first seen in 2003. It is playing this week in Oxford along with (on different nights) a new version of The Merchant of Venice, which had not opened when The Oxford Times went to press Onstage music performed by the cast is another feature of Propeller’s style and here it works well in summoning up the atmosphere, through use of lots of harmonicas, of the Athenian wood where so many magical scenes occur. Michael Pavelka’s versatile set, with its white lattice-work of interlocking leaves, does its bit as well.

The performances are uniformly excellent, with especially rich comedy supplied by the mechanicals led by the oafish Bottom (Bob Barrett). The Pyramus and Thisbe play, which can sometimes be a let-down, had many around me in the stalls in stitches.

The play can be seen tonight, tomorrow night and on Saturday afternoon. The Merchant of Venice is on this afternoon and Saturday night. Box office: 01865 305305 (www.oxfordplayhouse.com).