By Rpbert Nesti

Puckish is an adjective derived from Puck, the medieval woodland spirit — famous for playing harmless pranks — who was immortalized by William Shakespeare in his most famous comedy, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He is the catalyst of the action, dropping a magical potion into the eyes of sleeping Greek couples, as well as the Queen of the Fairies, that leads to comic chaos.

It is also a word that can be used to describe actor and musician Nick Cearley, who teams with Lauren Molina to perform as The Skivvies, the acclaimed and popular alt-cabaret team famous for their stripped-down covers of pop songs, mash-ups, and medleys — and for stripping down themselves. Their song choices are eclectic, and so are the musical instruments they play to accompany them: the cello, ukulele, glockenspiel, and melodica. The stripping down is their way of expressing their body positivity, and their shows regularly feature well-known Broadway talent who join them onstage. Their teasing act is playful — full of what can only be called puckish charm. Cearley has been so identified with stripping down in public that he titled his most recent one-man show I Didn’t Recognize You with Your Clothes On. (For more on The Skivvies, visit their website.)

For the next few weeks Cearley will be Puck in the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Parkman Bandstand on Boston Common. The production marks the third time CSC has staged Dream — the first was three decades ago, not on the Common but on a makeshift stage in Copley Square, for just a few performances, with local actors joined by some from the American Repertory Theater (when it was still a repertory company). It was Steven Maler, that production’s director, who nurtured the idea of a free performance of a Shakespeare play in a public park each summer, similar to New York City’s Shakespeare in the Park. That first Dream was a huge success, winning an Elliot Norton Award and leading to the company taking up residence on the Common, where it attracts upwards of 100,000 audience members a season.

Maler has returned to direct this latest Dream, with a concept that sets the play at the annual Burning Man festival, where Shakespeare’s supernatural spirits could be seen as the result of mind-altering substances. It also marks the second time Cearley has played Puck, and he’ll do so channeling the spirit of The Skivvies, from his costume to his musical performance. “The idea is like a desert beach party — like Burning Man,” he explained in a Zoom interview from Provincetown, where he lives half the year with his husband of 24 years. “And I saw my costume. I don’t think I’m wearing very much, but I’m glad about that, because I think these nights get a little hot under those lights.”

Cearley will be singing in Midsummer — but not cover versions or his own music. (The score is by David Reiffel, who is also the production’s music director.) “Nothing has changed in the text, of course, but the music will make it seem really different. I will be playing various instruments, like I do with The Skivvies. It’s not my own music, and it’s not my arrangements, but it’s definitely my sensibility of how I play those instruments. And they got me a really nice custom-made electric ukulele that I’ve been playing around with.”

Cearley played Puck before in an off-Broadway production, and he has an affinity for his character’s love of causing mischief. “Puck is special because I relate to him. When things go wrong in life — like when I am in a show and there’s a mishap or a blooper — I don’t really get scared of it. I get excited about how we’re going to handle it. That’s like Puck. And like Puck, I love mischief-making.”

Cearley divides his time between his Skivvies gigs and acting. He was seen on Broadway in All Shook Up; Off-Broadway in Pageant, Sex Tips for Straight Women from a Gay Man, and Cupid & Psyche; and regionally in Little Shop of Horrors, An Act of God, Next to Normal, and The Rocky Horror Show. He also co-conceived (with Lauren Molina) and starred in the actor-musician version of You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, which premiered at the Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park. And it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that he made the Guinness Book of World Records for appearing in ten different productions of Jonathan Tolins’ Buyer & Cellar.

It can be said Cearley wasn’t so much born in a trunk as in a dance studio. “My family owns dance studios, and I started on stage when I was three. So I was sort of thrust into it, first as a dancer, and then around the age of six I took piano lessons. By third grade, I got bitten by the acting bug. I’ve been doing it my whole life.”

He was precocious even then. “My first audition was for The Wizard of Oz in elementary school. My teacher said, ‘You should audition for the Scarecrow.’ But I said, ‘Can I audition for the Wicked Witch?’ I was nine, and the teacher was like, ‘Sure.’ And I got the role. This wasn’t in some sophisticated urban center — this was a very rural area outside of Cincinnati, Ohio. So it was definitely out of the ordinary — completely out of the box — for a boy to want to play the witch, but I just knew it was going to be more fun.”

Just playing around is one of the reasons The Skivvies came about. 24-years ago, he and Molina were traveling the country in a children’s theater show — Theatreworks USA’s Just So Stories. Nick played the Baby Elephant and Lauren played the Leopard. (It is how they got their Equity cards.) Being musicians, they took their instruments on the road and would spend time together making up silly songs to amuse themselves. Back in New York, they started doing cabaret shows, but it wasn’t until 2012 that they branded themselves and put their first video on YouTube. That came when they heard Rihanna’s “We Found Love” on the radio and decided to record a stripped-down version. “What we do is strip down the music to the bare bones of what any song would be,” he explainsed. “That’s the point of it.”

Molina, he recalls, was walking around her living room deciding what to wear. “And she was just in a bra. I joked, ‘Well, why don’t you just wear that?’ To which she replied, ‘Well, we are stripping down the music. We could make this our costume, and then never comment on it.’ And that’s where it began. We were like, well, that’s The Skivvies. The skivvies are our arrangements, but we also stripped down.”

“I remember that first video. It was a lot for us to put this out there because we didn’t know what would happen.” The video went viral, but there were comments that said things like they were too talented to be taking their clothes off. “I wanted to reply to that and say, ‘If we didn’t, you wouldn’t have clicked.’ We know it’s a gimmick. Now it’s 14 years later, and we get to tour most of the year. It’s awesome.”

It has, though, taken Cearley some time to become comfortable wearing so little on stage. “I’m more comfortable now. I don’t focus on it too much, so I don’t feel a lot of pressure about it. Whenever we have special guests who perform with us, they often talk about the body thing, but we like to encourage body positivity. We don’t discriminate against any type of body. We consider our shows like a pajama party, like a beach party. And after the first five minutes, I sort of forget I’m in my underwear — it just sort of goes away. It’s a costume.”

On August 7, The Skivvies will perform a family-friendly show prior to that evening’s performance of Midsummer on the Common.

Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream runs July 22 – August 9. Free on the Boston Common. For more information, visit the CSC’s website at this link.