SOURCE: Neill, Heather. “Tales from the Bathroom.” Times Educational Supplement 4486 (21 June 2002): 14.

In the following review of Mike Alfreds's 2002 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream for Shakespeare's Globe Theatre, Neill notes the director's highlighting of the “dream” aspect of the play by dressing the cast in pyjamas and negligees.

Mike Alfreds, the director of this production, has chosen to concentrate on the word “dream” in the title and has his entire cast dressed in pyjamas and negligees.

The props have a whiff of the bathroom—a loo roll for Peter Quince's scroll of names when the Mechanicals turn up for rehearsal, and toothbrushes instead of daggers in the Pyramus and Thisbe play in which Snug plays Lion with a bathmat mane. Even Bottom's “translation” into an ass (in John Ramm's successfully slapstick interpretation) is signified by a pair of ears consisting of fluffy slipper mules.

During a Talking Theatre...