We’ve been ravenous in Bangor. Hungry past a growl. Hollow to the core. Clean starved — and all for a taste of Shakespeare.

But famish no more, O gentle theatergoers!

A feast has come to our fair city.

Director Mark Torres has staged “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” on the banks of the Penobscot River and Thursday’s opening-night attendance, an estimated 900 people, points to the craving we have for Renaissance-style fun under the summer stars.

Take us outdoors. Sit us in back-breaking bleachers. Mingle the voices of actors with car horns, police sirens, Bangor Fair screams, airplane roars, boats winging by, and even the distant smell of skunk. It doesn’t matter.

In fact, it’s thrilling to be drawn for an evening to a field — between the train tracks and the river, on fresh squishy grass where children can run and adults can relax — to see a play. The past and present of Bangor merge, and — what’s more — the best of Stratford-upon-Avon rises from the magic of the people and the river and the storytelling.

Bangor citizens want this kind of nightlife in the summer, and they will bring their children, teachers, sweethearts and high school buddies for a chance to enjoy the combination of balmy weather, happy crowds and the enticing words of Shakespeare.

On Thursday evening, people began arriving at 6. They flung out their blankets, picnicked with friends, or ate food from the booths set up by local restaurants. They watched sword fights by the Society for Creative Anachronism. One 4-year-old boy was so taken with the adventure, he air-jousted with his mother. “Guess what I’m doing with my mommy?” he screamed to a bystander. “I’m fencing!” Then he fell dead on the ground and giggled.

Other children gathered for a pre-show lesson on the plot. Pam Carr, who designed the props and also lent her son for a part in the show, explained key points. She clarified why the men in the play wear dresses (“Oh brother!” grunted one boy in an aside), how the fairies use potions to make people fall in love (“Yuk!” the same boy bemoaned), and that the kids will probably laugh at the name of the character Bottom (“We’re laughing now!” he chortled).

When the lead-in music for the play started, everyone took their seats — on blankets, lawn chairs, and bleachers. The characters processed on to stage. There were the royals: Theseus (Ron Lisnet), Egeus (Chuck Cronin), Hippolyta (Sharon Zolper). The young lovers: Lysander (Geno Carr), Hermia (Regina C. Verow), Demetrius (Aaron J. Roth) and Helena (Kristen E. Gwinn). The “rude mechanicals”: Mrs. Quince (Julie Arnold Lisnet), Nick Bottom (Robert Libbey) and their ensemble (Kent C. McKusick, Robert Bennett, Aaron Asimakopoulos, Julia Tolstrup, and the Penobscot Theatre dog, Mr. Hound). The fairies: Oberon (Todd Greenquist), Titania (Jennifer Monahan), Puck (Heinrick Snyder) and all their flittering, fluttering attendants (played by a band of local children).

The crowd was wide-eyed and willing, listening to the tale of the unsmooth courses of love: a daughter forced by her father to foreswear her true love and marry a man she dislikes; a fairy queen cursed into loving a weaver who himself has been the folly of a sprite, and thus given the head of a donkey.

The community cast and the atmosphere of the night sky happily carried the show, transporting the varied audience to long-ago Athens and the mystical woods. Of particular note was Libbey, as Bottom, who had the audience hee-hawing with laughter. Lisnet, as his play-within-a-play director, complemented him with delightful sharpness. And never a better wall was played than by the cleverly snide and grumbling McKusick.

Choreographer Keith Robinson had the fairies gliding in dance ditties. They pranced and frolicked over the sylvan set constructed of little more than black cloth panels, green-painted floors, and Lisa Tromovitch’s lighting design. The rolling river played a most delicious backdrop.

At the end, all were sated, full-up on a dream of kings and Amazons, lovers and pixies.

There are still production kinks to work out, such as getting the floor mikes to work effectively. Also, it would be lovely to see actors doing less hand wringing and brow furrowing, and more exploration of the full range of expression that Shakepeare’s poetry affords. A strong voice and a clear sense of language can go a lot further onstage than many acting rules.

But the first performance of Shakespeare on the waterfront was a merry meal for the masses and a taste of what we should never go without now that we know what jewels these morsels be.

“A Midsummer Night’s Dream” will be performed 8 p.m. Aug. 6 at the waterfront. Activities begin at 6 p.m. Tickets, which are $5, can be purchased on site, or at many local stores. For information, call 942-3333.