Click here to view full image (Photograph by Tom Holte, Copyright Shakespeare Birthplace Trust)

Peter Brook’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream was a landmark in the history of Shakespeare production, and the most influential Shakespeare production of the second half of the twentieth century. Originally staged at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, England, in 1970 its influence has been felt around the world ever since.

Of all Shakespeare’s plays, A Midsummer Night’s Dream had been the most bound by traditions of staging.  Clive Barnes, reviewing the play, commented that Brook

‘has stripped the play down, asked exactly what it is about. He has forgotten gossamer fairies, sequined eyelids, gauzy veils and whole forests of Beerbohm-trees. He sees the play for what it is – an allegory of sensual love, and a magic playground of lost innocence and hidden fears.’

His set was a plain white box hung with trapezes, surrounded above by a catwalk on which actors could watch the action. There were no illusions, but the actors used circus tricks to emphasise the artificiality of the play. Costumes were brightly coloured loose shifts or shirts and trousers, and the traditional accompaniment of .  Mendelssohn’s Wedding March blared from loudspeakers as an ironic comment on the action. By some actors doubling roles both in court and forest (Hippolyta/Titania, Theseus/Oberon, Philostrate/Puck) the fairy world became the world of the subconscious.

An online exhibition on the production can be found on the Touchstone website at http://www.touchstone.bham.ac.uk/exhibition/MND/home.html

Category: People

Institute: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust

Your Comments (0)

Show/Hide comments