A Midsummer Night’s Dream [excerpt]

Summary

1957 BBC production of a 15-minute excerpt from Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the Theatre Flash series, presented directly from the stage of the Old Vic Theatre.

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

Tuesday 31 December 1957

Time

8.15pm-8.30pm

Series

Theatre Flash

Channel

BBC Television

Production company

BBC

Credits

Director

Michael Benthall

Television Presentation by

Derek Burrell-Davis

Playwright

William Shakespeare

Cast

Jean Atkinson	Fourth Fairy
Gillian Bosworth	Cobweb
Juliet Cooke	Second Fairy
James Culliford	Snug
Paul Daneman	Quince
Judi Dench	First Fairy
Derek Francis	Snout
Ronald Fraser	Flute
Valerie Gibson	Mustardseed
Frankie Howerd	Bottom
Nancy Kwan	Third Fairy
Stella Orton	Moth
Joyce Redman	Titania
Keith Taylor	Puck
Daniel Thorndike	Starveling
Bridget Wood	Peaseblossom

Additional details

Origination

Live from theatre

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

Old Vic: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Newspaper review)

Reference

The Times, 24 December 1957, p. 3

Linking notes

n.b. this is a review of the stage production, not the televised excerpt.

Title

Radio Times, 27 December 1957 (Magazine)

Linking notes

listing and photographs on p. 10