A Midsummer Night's Dream

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Comedy Opened 7 February 2006, Closed 25 February 2006

Novello Theatre The Aldwych, London

The Royal Shakespeare Company present William Shakespeare's comedy A Midsummer Night's Dream in a production directed by RSC Associate Director Gregory Doran.

Young lovers defy authority and flee the court, only to find themselves caught in a web of illusion and magic in the Athenian woods.

"Gregory Doran is surely the best Shakespearean director working in Britain today... This is a lovely production, combining hilarity with great heart and a real sense of wonder" The Daily Telegraph

"[Gregory Doran's] entertaining new production for the Royal Shakespeare Company opens, teasingly, with just a couple of notes of Mendelssohn before Theseus and Hippolyta, armoured and clashing to the sounds of battle, fall laughing into each other's arms, as the Anthenian duke's wins and woos the Amazon queen 'with my sword'. Text and context are treated with careful imagination... The perennial problem of portraying fairies is addressed by the successful use of puppets... The performers combine delightfully to convey the play's emphasis on the acts of watching and being watched." The Sunday Telegraph

"Had the audience whooping with delight" The Guardian

"This is one of the two or three truly great productions of this great play I have ever seen. Gregory Doran directs it nimbly and wisely, with a sense of generosity, magic abd humour. The play always surprises you. It's about love and identity. If you love the right person, you open up, you become what you where meant to be. If it is the wrong love, you become someone you wouldn't recognise. Also, love arises from conflict: harmony comes from recognising each other's value... A masterly production" The Sunday Times

"Marvellous, comic, opulent. A sustained, snowballing romp, funnier than anything currently on show on stage, screen or television. Terrific" The Daily Mail

"Gregory Doran's sleek production will no doubt be remembered as the one in which the changeling boy was an amiable version of a ventriloquist's dummy, while Peaseblossom & co manipulated fairy puppets... The puppets add a spooky twist to the prevailing witchiness: Stephen Brimson Lewis's design is a black junkyard of bedsteads, planks and ladders. But they don't add significance... Doran's real success is pulling off an exceptionally funny play within a play." The Observer