A Midsummer Night’s Dream Peter Hall Production

About: Set in Elizabethan England, Peter Hall’s new production sees Titania, the Fairy Queen, as a portrait of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, fascinated with the theatre, besieged by courtiers but ‘married to the people of England’ Judi Dench first played Titania for Peter Hall with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1962 and they have subsequently worked together on productions such as Antony and Cleopatra (National Theatre), The Royal Family (Haymarket) and Hay Fever (West End).

Reviews: “Exquisitely imagined… a dream you never want to wake from” Mail on Sunday “One of the most lucid and beautifully spoken productions of the Dream I have ever seen” Charles Spencer, The Daily Telegraph “Wonderfully funny… Oliver Chris is comic perfection” The Independent “Dench is superb” Financial Times

Dame Judi: “One has to be careful what one says about Judi Dench. Last March, when Charles Spencer unwisely described her performance in Madame de Sade as "sour and cross" and suggested that it had been delivered in "formidable old-boot mode", Dame Judi unwisely wrote him a letter explaining that he was "an absolute shit" and she was "sorry I didn't get a chance to kick you". “risky role as the amorous Queen Titania in Peter Hall's new A Midsummer Night's Dream” "The Fairy Queen is usually played by a voluptuous actress in her thirties […] Wouldn't the effect of watching a woman so advanced in years falling passionately in love with an ass be more grotesque than amusing?“ “everybody agrees – with rare and raucous unanimity – that Dame Judi, without question, gives good queen.” "that Dench is at her hilarious best” The Guardian