SOURCE: McQueen-Thomson, Douglas. “A Disturbing Dream.” Arena Magazine (August 2000): 53.

McQueen-Thomson reviews the Bell Shakespeare Company's production of A Midsummer Night's Dream directed by Elke Neidhardt, arguing that the play's “unrelieved austerity and frostiness” produced a “tired disjointedness rather than original coherence.”

What kind of grim pessimism drives designers these days into drab colour schemes of grey and silver? Whatever the answer, the Bell Shakespeare Company's new production of A Midsummer Night's Dream was cold, sterile and very grey. Often imagined as a play about enchantment and wondrous fantasy, this production instead presented a bleak, unsettling dream. Too monotone and inconsistent, this interpretation failed to captivate.

The burden of Peter Brook's famous 1970 nightmare-inspired production of A Midsummer Night's Dream obviously weighed heavily on director Elke Neidhardt. The program notes refer often to Brook, and Neidhardt mentions having seen his production herself. And like Brook, Neidhardt opted for unrelieved austerity...