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Peter
Brook's A Midsummer Night's Dream 1970
Stage
Devices
Brook
approached this production with deliberate radicalism. ‘He [Brook]
persuaded you to forget a century of theatrical tradition, with its
conventions and clichés’, said Robert Speaight. Brook, together
with designer, Sally Jacobs, highlighted the artificiality
of theatre with a brilliantly lit, white box set,
which replaced the traditional picturesque woodland. Nothing was
hidden and everything revealed, set out in clarity against the white
space, dubbed ‘a magic box of tricks’ by Jay Halio. The play
opened without a curtain, with the full company juggling and
tumbling. A balcony around the stage area provided a space for the
other actors to watch the action on stage. The costume and movement
of circus acrobats inspired the actors’ bright silks and flights
on trapeze. It was a visual assault on the audiences’ senses, and
on preconceived ideas of the play.
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1970. Horns
are blown to awake the sleeping lovers, suspended behind. Note actors watching the action on stage from gallery above the screens. Photographer: Joe Cocks |
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1970. Oberon, Titania, Puck and Bottom. Removing the spell from Titania |
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1970. Oberon and Puck seated on trapezes. |
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1959. The opening scene.
A Jacobean country manor house provided the setting to Peter Hall’s 1959 production, prompted by the theory that the play’s original composition formed part of the celebrations of a courtly wedding. Elizabethan costumes and rushes strewn on the floor gave a strong sense of period. It was this traditional approach which Brook was trying to throw off in his revolutionary production. |
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1994. Set Design. Photographer: Malcolm Davies. Adrian Noble’s production contained deliberate allusions to Brook’s refashioning of the play. The set designed by Anthony Ward shows Titania’s bower in a raised position, doorways, and a bareness of stage, all indebted to the influence of Brook’s production. The lighting design’s bright shining colours spilled over into the silks and rich brocades of the costumes: the set’s white walls were flooded with crimson light for Athens and indigo for the forest. |
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Stage Devises
The Mechanicals
The Fairies 
Bottom's Transformation
The
Lovers
Pyramus and Thisbe
The Forest