“Over the Rainbow” doesn’t even have to start playing. When Dorothy (Chanel Tilghman) and her puppeteered pup Toto simply strike a dreamy pose, you know the Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg gold-spun ballad is coming.

你可能不知道,如果你没有revisited “The Wizard of Oz” in a while, is how much it means to you and how much you’ve missed and yearned for it.

AttendingAmerican Conservatory Theater’s production,which opened Wednesday, June 8, at theToni Rembe Theater,就像看到亲人,谁没有’t been around since your childhood. When the saucer-eyed Tilghman, so open of expression she could drink in the whole world and shine it back out, tries to get someone, anyone, on her Kansas farm to listen to her, your own youthful memories of being sidelined by adults might come whizzing back.

But it’s also as if those memories had a delirious and daffy new look. Director and choreographer Sam Pinkleton andscenic and costume designer David Zinnexplode the story into bursts of ruffles, confetti, bubbles, googly eyes, toys, hula hoops, pom-poms, fringe, kazoos, macrame, jack-o’-lantern heads, neon and rainbows.

The aesthetics and casting are intentionally queer, with some performers hailing from local drag circuits, and the effect is a powerful political one at a time when officials nationwide are criminalizing trans existence and banning drag queen story hours. If one gift of “The Wizard of Oz” is that it takes a child’s frustrations seriously, exorcizing demons for those of us long past that age, Pinkleton’s version suggests that LGBTQ adults might be uniquely equipped to reach, understand and aid lost kids.

Just watch the way Ada Westfall’s twitchy Professor Marvel clucks about a runaway Dorothy stumbling into her psychic’s tent. The knowing wink of high camp becomes the unruffled sagacity of a mother hen. Or the way the El Beh’s guard at the gates of Emerald City expresses excitement by peeling off a uniform to reveal a mermaid dress and then erupts into a little dance whenever it’s time to spew forth a line.

Kids, the show implies, just naturally understand and gravitate toward those who live life out loud.

Choice upon choice reveals the text as fresh clay for wild sculpting. Spectators get instructions to wave the yellow napkins tucked into in their playbills that read “I’m Not A Napkin. I’m A Yellow Brick” to form the yellow brick road, just one instance of many canny bits of audience participation.

The tornado takes human form in Travis Santell Rowland, a glorious, malevolent blaze of caution tape and sparkly beard commanding two giant floor fans. Courtney Walsh’s Wicked Witch of the West and Katrina Lauren McGraw’s Glinda get in a swordfight with a broomstick and a toy bubble wand. Ensemble members Beth Wilmurt and Ezra Reaves’ reprise of “Ding Dong! The Witch Is Dead” sounds like the love child of a religious chant and an ’80s glam rock intro. Musical arrangements often have the pleasantly farty sound of an 8-bit video game, as if Oz is a world in Super Mario.

This production of “The Wizard of Oz” also exemplifies how to marshal the artistry of the city of San Francisco and reflect it back to us. Drawings from local elementary schoolers are part of the set. On opening night, Sister Roma of theSisters of Perpetual Indulgencemade a cameo, reading proclamations issued by the Mayor of Munchkinland, played by a printer with giant googly eyes. Another cameo came from the San Francisco Lesbian/Gay Freedom Band, who marched on stage — rainbow plumes in their shakos — to play as part of “Jitterbug” (a number cut from the 1939 film).

That hoopla isn’t just spectacle. It continually asserts that a child’s feelings are worth this much investment. Dorothy’s friends Scarecrow (Danny Scheie), Tin Man (Darryl V. Jones) and Lion (Cathleen Riddley) might be older than she is, but they, too, well with pathos in their wishes for a brain, a heart and courage.

If a final moment attiring most of the ensemble in Judy Garland drag falls flat, it doesn’t matter. For lost souls of all ages, this Oz beckons, offering a chance to be reborn.

Reach Lily Janiak:ljaniak@sfchronicle.com