How is Drew Carey getting ready for his gig narrating Shakespeare with the Cleveland Orchestra on Saturday night?

''I'm practicing rolling my R's. The models are giving me tips on how to point my finger into the air in an elegant way. And I'm trying to find a pair of XXL tights. Yeah, I'm really gearing up,'' Carey said in a phone conversation, letting loose with one of his big whoop-it-up laughs.

When the Cleveland native and host of television's The Price Is Right was asked whether he wanted to narrate Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream at Blossom, he didn't hesitate before accepting. ''I've always been a big fan of the orchestra and I want to support what they do,'' Carey said, adding, ''I don't really take gigs for money anymore. I just do them if I think they're going to be fun, or interesting, or a good life experience. So, I thought, boy, that's something that the average person wouldn't be able to do . . . That's how I always pick my gigs now.''

The comedian may be one of the most famous examples the orchestra can produce of someone who went to its education concerts. As Carey puts it, ''They used to make our class go see Peter and the Wolf.'' But joking aside, he's as loyal to his hometown band as he was to the now-defunct Cleveland Ballet, which he invited in the '90s to perform on the opening sequence of The Drew Carey Show.

Saturday night, Carey will provide the story line to Felix Mendelssohn's incidental music for Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Sopranos Mary Wilson and Anne-Carolyn Bird (both making their Cleveland Orchestra debuts), women of the Blossom Festival Chorus and women of the Cleveland Orchestra Youth Chorus will join Carey and the orchestra. Early music specialist Nicholas McGegan, music director of San Francisco's acclaimed Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra, will direct.

Originally, Mendelssohn composed the score to be performed as incidental music with Shakespeare's play. The score can be performed alone, too.

When a couple of actors or a narrator are added, the lines people choose to use vary from production to production. Often they'll include some of the most famous bits from the play, such as the closing speech.

The Cleveland Orchestra's artistic administrator, Frank Dans, said that Saturday's production is one that conductor McGegan worked out with actor Simon Callow for a recent performance in London.

As Carey cheerfully observes, there isn't a lot of Shakespeare in his background. He does remember the pitfalls from acting class: ''Either you put on a British accent that's not yours or you don't know what the words mean and use the sentence in the wrong way. There are millions of mistakes you can make with Shakespeare.''

But if you were looking for a poster boy for the universal appeal of Shakespeare, the crew-cut, down-home Carey just might be it.

And he has seen firsthand how Shakespeare can cut across social lines. Two different years, he has performed Shakespeare with Tom Hanks in a charity event that Hanks and his wife, Rita Wilson, do for a theater in Los Angeles that serves underprivileged kids.

Hanks calls in his actor friends, who read from scripts, use whatever's available for costumes and make their entrances by getting up off the stools they're sitting on. After one morning rehearsal, they perform that evening.

And Shakespeare's plays go over great with the kids, who get the message even if it's delivered in a mysterious old-fashioned form of English, Carey said.

As an example, he tells a story about a comedian friend who spent a whole day communicating only with expressive grunts. ''Shakespeare's the same way; you can tell [what he means] from the actions of the people, even if you miss a word, even if you don't know Old English. You still know what's going on.''

It shouldn't be hard to follow the comic romancing that happens in A Midsummer Night's Dream, which is as fizzy and famous as anything Shakespeare wrote.

Speaking of romance, any news on Carey's wedding plans with fiancee Nicole Jaracz? ''We haven't set a date. We're just taking it day by day and enjoying ourselves. Nobody's going anywhere,'' Carey said.

Then again, A Midsummer Night's Dream is all about couples who fall in love and behave in surprising ways. Carey might want to watch out for those meddling fairies. You never know what spell they'll cast next.