A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Summary

1946 BBC outside broadcast of Robert Atkins’ Bankside Players production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the Open Air Theatre in Regent’s Park.

Theatre play

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare [more information]

Play synopsis

'Egeus orders his daughter Hermia to marry Demetrius; she refuses because she and Lysander are in love. Her friend Helena is in love with Demetrius, who once loved her but now does not. Under the law of Athens, Duke Theseus gives Hermia four days to obey her father on pain of death or confinement to a nunnery. Hermia and Lysander escape this harsh law by running away to the woods. Demetrius pursues them there, with Helena pursing him. In the woods, Oberon and Titania, King and Queen of fairies, have quarrelled because Titania refuses to hand over an Indian changeling boy to be Oberon’s page. Oberon instructs the mischievous Puck, Robin Goodfellow, to press the juice of a magic flower on Titania’s eyes as she sleeps; it will make her fall in love with the first being she sees on waking. In an attempt to reconcile Demetrius and Helena, Oberon orders that juice should be put on his eyes whilst he is sleeping and she is near, but Robin mistakenly puts it on Lysander, who thus falls in love with Helena. She thinks she is being mocked. Love-juice is then placed on Demetrius’ eyes in order to rectify the mistake, but the result is that he too falls for Helena. The boys fight over her and the girls quarrel. While Titania has been sleeping, a company of Athenian artisans under the leadership of Peter Quince has come to the wood to rehearse a play for the ensuing wedding festivities of Duke Theseus and Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. Robin puts an ass’s head on Bottom the weaver and because of the love-juice Titania falls in love with him. Eventually all is restored to right and the artisans perform their comically tragic play of Pyramus and Thisbe (source: http://www.rscshakespeare.co.uk/midSummerNightsDream.html, accessed 12 November 2012).

Production history

Written around 1600.

Date of transmission

Wednesday 24 July 1946

Time

2.30-5.00pm

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Theatre company

Robert Atkins’ Bankside Players

Credits

Theatre Producer

Robert Atkins (1886-1972)

Playwright

William Shakespeare

Orchestra Directed by

Robert Watson

Dances Arranged by

Mary Honer

Dancer

Dinette Bessell (Fairy)

Dancer

Lorna Burgess (Fairy)

Dancer

Mary Bussell (Fairy)

Dancer

Zoe Gampels (Fairy)

Dancer

Bridget Harting (Fairy)

Dancer

Ann Jory (Fairy)

Dancer

Ann Newman (Fairy)

Dancer

Diana Spencer-Lewis (Fairy)

Dancer

Wendy Stuart (Fairy)

Cast

Robert Atkins (1886-1972)	Bottom
Iris Baker	Helena
Peter Bell	Demetrius
Vivienne Bennett	Titania
John Byron	Oberon
Thomas Dance	Egeus
Andrew Faulds	Lysander
Clement Hamelin	Starveling
Patricia Hicks	Hermia
Mary Honer	Puck
Desmond Llewellyn	Theseus
Hugh Manning	Snout
David March	Philostrate
Angela Shafto	Hippolyta
Ivan Staff	Flute
Ronald Stocks	Snug
Russell Thorndike	Quince
Diana Wilson	First Fairy

Additional details

Origination

Live from theatre

Vision original

Monochrome

Notes

'Those who watch the television broadcast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream from the Regent’s Park Open-Air Theatre on Wednesday afternoon will be seeing it very much as Shakespeare intended it to be seen, sans scenery and sans "curtains" [...] Weather permitting, this will be a straight-forward performance, watched by three Emitron cameras set up in the middle of the audience’ (Source: ‘The Scanner’, ‘Dream on the Screen’, Radio Times, 19 July 1946, p. 24).

Extant status

No archival copy is known to exist.

Play tags

children’s drama; Elizabethan drama; Greece, as theme or setting; marriage; supernatural; theatre or acting, as theme

Print sources

Title

Radio Times, 19 July 1946 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing on p. 26 and brief article on p. 24