Gretchen Hall and Adrian LaTourelle in Cymbeline.

For Shakespeare fans seeing their first production of Cymbeline at the Shakespeare Theatre this season, the show can feel a little like “The Bard’s Greatest Hits.” Mysterious concoction of herbs which creates a death-like appearance? Check. Girl dressed as a boy? Check. Severed body parts? You’re covered. Woman falsely accused of infidelity who fakes her own death? Got it. Machiavellian queen? We’re set.

Even putting the tropes aside, Cymbeline‘s plot in general feels all over the place, and that may be one reason that it’s not one of the most widely performed works in the Shakespeare canon. But director Rebecca Bayla Taichman takes the show’s absurdity and runs with it — and with the help of some artistic touches and some unconventional character interpretations, produces a show that transcends its source material.

Bayla Taichman was the force behind Shakespeare Theatre’s impossibly romantic take on Twelfth Night back in winter 2008, and Cymbeline shares some of those same etherial sensibilities. Picturesque snow-flecked trees flank the stage, rain cascades down on the cast , and the entire play is presented as if it’s a fairy-tale being told to a young child (Zoe Wynn Briscoe), with the lines between imagination, dreams and reality all blurred.