Midsummer Night’s Dream, A

Synopsis: A video recording, using a single, fixed camera, of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s 1989 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Directed by John Caird with John Carlisle and Clare Higgins doubling their roles of Oberon/Theseus and Titania/Hippolyta.
Language: English
Country: Great Britain
Medium: Video
Technical information: Colour / Sound
Recording date: 24 Aug 1989
Duration: 180 mins

Director

John Caird

Writer

William Shakespeare

Music

Ilona Sekacz

Production Design

Sue Blane

Cast

Notes: Different actors and actresses played the fairies in different performances. It has not been ascertained who played the roles on the RSC recording.
General: `The ‘wood’ is a junk yard of broken bicycles and pianos and the like, with an iron bedstead to serve as a bower for Titania. Fairies clump about unmagically in Doc Martens. Puck, also heavily booted, wears motoring goggles, school cap and a tutu over baggy Bermuda shorts’. Kenneth Hurren, Mail on Sunday (16 April 1989).
History: Press night 11 April 1989.
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: Smallwood, Robert Shakespeare Quarterly 41 (1990), pp 101-14 (review article).

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

British Universities Film & Video Council