PRINCIPAL CAST: Katy Brittain (Hermia); Anthony Brown (Bottom); James Kerr (Lysander); Alex Kingston (Titania); Clive Kneller (Puck); Michael Mueller (Oberon); Brendan O'Hea (Demetrius); Dariel Pertwee (Helena).

This production ran from 1 - 24 October 1992.

"Michael Rudman, here opening his first season as Artistic Director of Sheffield Theatres, has conceptualised A Midsummer Night's Dream as a set of dreams, each waking into the next until the entire dream dissolves with the house lights up and the Athenians and supernaturals returned to their actors' rehearsal clothes. This last, apart from an ill-fated attempt to join in the song's refrain, is the most memorable moment of the evening, and also the only one where Rudman's overall scheme becomes apparent. The whole middle part of the play is conceived as the dream of Theseus. The argument for this might be that at an unconscious level Theseus is anxious about his forthcoming marriage to Hippolyta and uneasy about his own harshness as patriarchal ruler in condemning Hermia to death or a nunnery should she persist in loving Lysander instead of the chosen Demetrius....Cool Grecian columns and staircases stand behind a green, hummocky ground which seems an unlikely floor for a court. It works better as the stonework is lifted away to leave ivy-clad ruins for the forest scenes but it never provides enough acting space. Its papier-mache resembles a landscape model, presumably as seen from the height of Puck's girdle round the earth, but it's hard to do more than note this in cerebral fashion."  ~ Jeffrey Wainwright, "The sleep of the unjust", Independent, 10 October 1992