DESERT SHAKESPEARE FESTIVAL - A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S

The Desert Shakespeare Festival brings A Midsummer Night's Dream to Palm Springs in June — and the coincidence of Shakespeare's most enchanted play landing in a desert city at the peak of its warmest season is not lost on anyone in the room.

The Plaza Theatre is a 1936 Spanish Colonial Revival venue that handles theatrical productions with the weight of a building built for exactly this. The acoustics work. The sightlines earn the architecture. A Midsummer Night's Dream in this room — the fairies, the lovers, the donkey, the mechanicals and their play within a play — reads as the kind of theatrical experience that reminds you why live performance exists when a screen approximation doesn't.

Shakespeare in June in Palm Springs means the Plaza handles the climate so you don't have to think about it. The play is funny, and it is funnier in a room of people laughing together than it is on any page. Tickets at ticketmaster.com — the Festival brings professional production values to one of the most frequently performed plays in the Western canon, which means the baseline is high before the curtain goes up. Lock your seats before the summer dates fill.