Michelle Terry as Puck
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, London, May 2023
Photo by Tristram Kenton
064 – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, by William Shakespeare
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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is arguably Shakespeare’s first great comedy. It is undoubtedly one of his most enduringly popular works with producers and audiences alike. The play has all the ingredients of classic romantic comedy: a magical setting, a merry-go-round of earnest young lovers, a fairy King and Queen, and a troupe of hapless comic actors, all given a supernatural spin in the course of a single moonlit night. But is the dream-like world of the wood outside Athens as benign a place as we imagine?
As we record this episode a new production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is in repertory in the Summer season at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in London, where the Artistic Director, Michelle Terry, gives an outstanding performance as the sardonic sprite, Puck.
My guest to help explore Shakespeare’s wondrous “visions” is Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Emma has appeared twice before on the podcast, sharing her deep knowledge of The Duchess of Malfi, and of Macbeth.
Emma Smith
Emma Smith is Professor of Shakespeare Studies at Hertford College, University of Oxford. Her books on Shakespeare’s First Folio, The Making of the First Folio and Shakespeare’s First Folio: Four Centuries of an Iconic Book have been published in new editions to coincide with the 400th anniversary this year. She is currently working on an edition of Twelfth Night, and a new book on Elizabethan art and culture.
Recommended Play
Emma recommended Dancing at Lughnasa by Brian Friel, which we covered in episode 63.
Emma also volunteered to return to talk about any other Shakespeare play that we haven’t yet covered!
The Footnotes to our episode on William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream include observations on the forest as a setting for love and dreams, on the play as democratic drama, and on the not-so-hidden meanings in the names of the rude mechanicals.
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Douglas
113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
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