Midsummer Night’s Dream, A

Synopsis: A video recording, using a single, fixed camera of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1986 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Directed by Bill Alexander with Janet McTeer as Titania and Gerard Murphy as Oberon.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 4 Dec 1986
Duration: 155 mins

Notes: A recording was made at the Barbican 5 February 1988 with Frances Tomelty as Titania/Hippolyta.
General: `William Dudley opens the play in what looks like the Berlin Reichschancellery around 1937 and moves it to an Athenian wood which marries Klingsor’s Magic Garden to Selfridges’ southwest corner window with allusions to Tenniel’s ‘Alice’ and the disorienting botanical dream-world of Richard Dadd." Michael Radcliffe, The Observer 13 July .86.
History: Press night 8 July 1986
Stills: Stills from, and design notes on, the production are available on the Arts and Humanities Performing Arts Data Service (AHDS) at http://ahds.ac.uk/performingarts/collections/designing-shakespeare.htm
Reviews: Hyland, Dominic (ed). A Midsummer Night’s Dream. (Harlow, Essex: Longman, 1990).
[Annotated student edition, with questions for study. Concludes with a discussion of comedy and the major characters in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In an introductory essay, Bill Alexander discusses his direction of the 1986-87 Royal Shakespeare Company production].

Name: Royal Shakespeare Company
Web: https://www.rsc.org.uk External site opens in new window
Address: Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Waterside
Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire
CV37 6BB

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