As you sit in the tiny performance space inside the Casa del Pueblo Methodist Church - which the Rorschach Theatre Company always manages to make look like an entirely new space from its previous production - you're hot. The sweat's dripping down your face. You're trying to avoid any bodily contact with those sitting next to you. You're starting to feel a little faint.

Impressively enough, Rorschach's lack of air conditioning only serves to place its audience even more firmly into the world of The Arabian Night, its offering for the Capital Fringe Festival. The tale is set in an oppressively hot apartment building in an unknown location. It also has a dubiously functioning elevator, a mysterious sound of rushing water that appears to have no source, and a space/time continuum not quite in sync with our own. And that's just the beginning.

The Arabian Night's many stories each start off fairly straightforward. The building superintendent (Edwin Xavier) seems to be experiencing a flashback to his previous marriage. Fatima (Nelina Giridhar) has a set of conventional problems - a weird roommate and a series of annoyances which culminate in her getting locked out of the building. Her boyfriend's state is a little more dire, at least in his own mind; Kalil (Matt Dunphy) is trapped in a broken elevator with no visible means of escape. On the more elusive side of things, we have a roommate whose past is a puzzle (Franzisca Dehke) and a neighbor (Jason McCool) who is using that roommate to play out an elaborate fantasy of his own.

But in The Arabian Night, things get much more surreal, and playwright Roland Schimmelpfennig brings everything together into a feverish, existential bedtime story of sorts, with mythological undertones. The play's convention of having the characters narrate the action, and even the stage directions, at every moment may jar at first, but is ultimately an effective device. Additionally, one of Rorschach's strengths as a company is the holistic approach it takes to its works; here, even the most incidental of touches - a splash of blood against a pane of glass, a set of jerky, slow-motion movements - contribute to the show's vibe.

The success of The Arabian Night doesn't rest solely in the hands of the playwright or the staging, as the cast navigates the show's intricacies with finesse. Clear standouts are Xavier, as the bumbling superintendent, Dehke's ethereal, sometimes even childlike take on the puzzling, half-naked blonde who seems to assault everyone's sensibilities, and Giridhar, who draws from impressive depths to convey not only worry and irritation, but eventually a rage that almost seems a possession when her character is eventually tested.

All in all, the dreamy, smoldering Arabian Night is worth every sweltering moment. But follow the cue of the play's scantily-clad roommate: dress for the weather.

The Arabian Night has a handful of performances not sold out: Sunday, June 23 at 5 p.m., Thursday though Saturday, July 27-29 at 8 p.m., and Sunday, July 30 at 5 p.m. Tickets are available on the theater's Web site.