Is it love or madness?

It's getting close to Valentine's Day, and traditionally theatres mount productions about love and relationships.

Somehow it seems appropriate that the University of Alberta's graduating BFA students tackle the madness of love in all its forms.

Opening tomorrow night with a cast of 12, Studio Theatre navigates William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, the Bard's playful ode to the transformative power of love.

Guest director Marti Maraden, one of Canada's foremost interpreters of Shakespeare, directs this wickedly funny show.

Her impact on the Canadian theatre is huge: 18 seasons acting and directing at Stratford Festival, seven seasons at Shaw Festival and eight years as artistic director of the national Arts centre English Theatre in Ottawa.

In Midsummer Night's Dream the world of immortal fairies and humans collide in unexpected ways with magic and love potions heightening the dilemma of desire.

“This is a journey of young people and it's a complex and lovely one. My goal is to infect them with a love of Shakespeare and to honour Shakespeare,” said Maraden.

St. Albert resident Kristen Padayas (Harold and Vivian) nabbed the role of Hermia, one the four young Athenian lovers in the throes of passion. Hermia loves Lysander, however her father Ageus is forcing her to marry Demetrius. Helen pines for Demetrius, however he is uninterested in her affections.

Hermia and Lysander elope to the dark forest and Demetrius follows in hopes of killing his rival. The fairy King Oberon interferes in the love quartet and soon the both fairies and humans are running around in circles trying to fix a series of mistakes.

“Hermia has a lot of spine. She's a foil to Helena. Helena is a softer, gentler character. Hermia is confident, speaks her mind and has a temper,” said Padayas noting that she has a similar streak of independence.

“But she's driven by love and in her heart, she knows what she wants.

While some theatre fans view Shakespeare as hoity-toity, one of Maraden's focuses is encouraging young actors to find rhythms in the language that mimic current popular speech.

As Padayas notes, “It's very funny. It's an accessible comedy. It's one of those shows that Mardi said, ‘Even if you are blind, you could watch the show.' It's a romance about the trials of love and the confusion of love.”