While top-notch shows are onstage at the city's professional houses -- yours truly spilled her coffee leaping to her feet at the close of the Cleveland Play House production of "The Whipping Man" -- there are also ambitious, inventive, dare I say "must-see" productions at area colleges.

There is such a cornucopia of titles that it's hard for a critic to sample them all, even on roller skates, like the blond Aussie muse in "Xanadu."

This fall's bumper crop includes Cleveland State University's "A Midsummer Night's Dream, Bollywood style," as it was put in the irresistible press release, and "Follies," Stephen Sondheim's famously dark, challenging musical, at Baldwin Wallace University.

Rollers skates throwing sparks, I was able to catch then both last week. Each show requires -- nay, demands -- a special shout-out, as both deserve A's for artistry and audacity.

The Bard goes Bollywood When I heard that Michael Mauldin, chairman of CSU's Theatre and Dance Department, had decided to set Shakespeare's most gonzo and beloved comedy in India in 1905, "during the British occupation of India, otherwise known as the Raj," as he put it, I was both repelled and intrigued.

On opening night, the stage was draped from floor to ceiling in colors that evoked flavors of Hawaiian Punch -- bright orange and shocking pink -- and I looked longingly at the Exit sign.

Soon, my trepidation turned to delight, as if by magic, much as the loquacious Bottom is transmogrified from a tailor to an ass.

Suddenly, I thought, "Why hasn't anyone mashed up the tale of confused lovers, warring fairies and misguided actors with all the flash and spectacle of a Bollywood musical?"

Perhaps it was the costumes by Tesia Benson -- a collision of British upper-crust bloomers and parasols with the luxurious, saturated silks of Indian royalty. Or the makeup by Janel Matum that gave the excellent Puck (Nathaniel Leeson) lavender skin, a Ziggy Stardust wig and a chic fur vest and his posse of supernatural groupies (good old Mustardseed, Cobweb and Fishscale) glow-in-the dark togs. (And let's not forget Oberon, King of the Fairies, he of the MC Hammer harem pants and Heat Miser 'do).

But in any event, it charmed.

Even seasoned stage vets can bungle the famous play-within-a-play in "Dream," a ridiculous paean to bad acting performed by Bottom and his clan of amateur thespians for the Duke of Athens. The CSU team delivers one of the funniest, most delightful renditions of "a tedious brief scene of young Pyramus and his love Thisby" I've seen.

And trust me, brothers and sisters, I've seen plenty.

Final performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Allen Theatre at PlayhouseSquare, Cleveland. Tickets are $5-$10. Go to playhousquare.org or call 216-241-6000.

Fabulous 'Follies' This spring, Victoria Bussert helmed a debauched, thrilling production of "Lizzie Borden" at the 14th Street Theatre in PlayhouseSquare, and my only regret was that I saw it the night before it closed, robbing me of the chance to tell readers to check it out -- immediately.

Happily, there's still time to beat a path to Bussert's "Follies" at the Kleist Center for Art & Drama at Baldwin Wallace, where she heads up the music theater program.

The plot is deceptively simple: On the eve of the demolition of the Weismann Theatre, performers known as Weismann girls -- a nod to the ostrich-festooned showgirls of the Ziegfeld Follies -- gather for a reunion. There, they confront the choices they've made in the decades since they slid into beaded bustiers, performing, in some cases, with ghosts of their former selves.

With lines such as "Are you ever savaged by regret?" and "All things beautiful must die," this isn't a feel-good musical, but rather a gorgeous, haunting work that defies easy pigeonholing. So very Sondheim.

Played without an intermission, the show's demands on its actors are legendary.

Bussert's students not only deftly handled the difficult material, in too many instances to name here, they elevated it. (I dare you to remain dry-eyed when Nanette Canfield, as Heidi Schiller, a white-haired Weismann girl from 1918, sings a duet with her younger self, played by Lucy Anders.)

But don't let me sway you. Consider the critique from Ted Chapin, president and executive director of Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization in the audience last Saturday. As a college student, Chapin was the production assistant for the original 1971 Broadway production.

"I think you did a remarkable job," he told Bussert and her gathered company in a Q&A after the show, adding that they had done "great honor" to one of Broadway's greatest musicals.

It doesn't get any better than that, folks.

Final performances at 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 4 and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 2 p.m. Sunday at the Kleist Center, 95 E. Bagley Road, Berea. Tickets are $10-$25. Call 440-826-2240.