A Midsummer Night's Dream
A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare. First produced 1604. A copy of the play was on sale in Cape Town in 1800 for £25, but no production followed apparently, despite the hopes of the reporter of the Kaapsche Courant (15 November).
Early amateur productions in South Africa include ** and Cecil John Rhodes being entertained by Rudyard Kipling and Jan Juta's sisters and family servants with the performance of scenes from A Midsummer Night's Dream on the slopes of Devil's Peak in the 1890s (Merrington, 200*; Juta 1972: 52).
First produced professionally in South Africa by the Holloway Company in Cape Town in 1900 (*??). Other notable productions include ***, the Shakespeare quadcentennial production at the Alexander Theatre in 1964 (directed by Joan Brickhill and Louis Burke and featuring them with Jenny Gratus. Robert Lang was the stage manager), Robert Mohr’s 1981 production (with Etienne Puren, Louise Saint Claire, Michael Richard and Tobie Cronje) during the opening season of the Pretoria State Theatre. Esther van Ryswyk’s famous puppet-and-human version (starring Clare Stopford, Fiona Ramsay, Neil McCarthy, David Butler, Jennie Reznek, Robert Finlayson and Gaynor Young and many others) was staged at the Oude Libertas Theatre and Baxter Theatre through a Market-Baxter-Handspring Puppet Company collaboration in 1988, then moved to the Market Theatre in 1989, redirected by Fred Abrahamse. **, Maynardville, 1995, Maynardville, 2002. Translated into Afrikaans as *** and produced by ** in 19**.
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