Introduction

Abstract

A review of Peter Hall’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1959 began: ‘After a century or so of plain sailing in the calm waters of the grand old Mendelssohn bosky dell tradition, producing A Midsummer Night’s Dream has become a problem again’ (Leamington Spa Courier, 5 June 1959). The problem was to find an alternative to the traditional approach which had prevailed for ‘a century or so’. This approach is usefully characterised in T. C. Kemp’s account of Michael Benthall’s 1949 Stratford production. He found it

magnificent in detail, but short in rustic enchantment. James Bailey’s rich Veronese palace, the sumptuous Renaissance-Greek costumes, the bevies of tulle-draped ballerinas, the black-garbed cohort that attended Oberon, the trunk-tortured depths of the forest and the spangled starlight of the Athenian night, all these made for theatrical opulence rich and rare.

(The Straiford Festival, 1953, p. 234.)