Peter Hall’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. 1968 film version, most notably starring Helen Mirren and Judi Dench

The fact that it was a film helped their differentiation between forest and palace. Dench’s role was repeated in Hall’s Rose Theatre production in 2010

Critical quotations and portrayals of various characters: Jay Halio: “[Hall] presents the English landscape in rain and fog, water drops falling in ponds, birds singing, and the sound of distant horns, as the screen credits appear” “Unlike many other Hippolytas, this one accepts her conquest by Theseus and seems to look forward with him eagerly o their wedding day” Describes Theseus as “wise, compassionate, and very fair”. Actors, all RSC are well versed in Shakespeare, and can therefore convey emotions skilfully while retaining the civility Hall stresses. “Hall’s fairies are little bots and girls with smudged faces and ragamuffin clothes,, who speak verse eloquently as children”. Emphasises ethereal and supernatural, yet civilised and intelligent, nature of the fairies. Titania and Oberon likened by Halio to “wood demons of Elizabethan folklore”. They also conform to the theory, although not at this point coined, that the play is an ‘erotic nightmare’. Little consistency of time of day and night. Puck, “unfortunately [...] is painted like a dog eager to carry out Oberon’s command”. The insignificance of the subject of Titania & Oberon’s argument is portrayed by the lack of any appearance on the part of the Indian changeling

Critical Quotations and portrayals of various characters (contd.) During the quarrels of the lovers, Hall prefers to omit the comical elements of their fighting in favour of portraying the deep-lying distress of the lovers in their loving the wrong person and quarrelling among themselves. Hall’s portrayal of the Mechanicals is typically comic, featuring an onion-munching Snout. The transformation of Bottom to ass is “realistic, [...] and its eyes stare out in lifelike fashion