Educational Media Reviews Online

Part of the "Taste of Shakespeare" series, A Midsummer Night's Dream is another video adaptation of the popular Shakespeare play. The purpose of this particular video series, however, is very different from the classic, straightforward presentation usually given to the Bard's works. According to the promotional material, the actors help connect Shakespeare's plays to the lives of today's students by dissolving difficulties with language, and by creating a forum for discussion of problematic situations in the plays. As such, the plays are presented as an abridgement with narrative commentary, where the actual actors explain the story and key scenes throughout the play presentation.

For A Midsummer Night's Dream, the folly, cruelty, and the inconstancy of love are the focus of the narration. The viewer is told of the intervention into the love lives of our characters by Oberon, the King of Fairies, and his subject Puck. The dark forest in which all of the action takes place, represents the forest of love, wherein the pain we inflict when we tell someone we once loved to "get lost" has direct meaning. The special effects used by the film's director to achieve the fairies' supernatural abilities and invisible workings on the humans is especially notable. Highly recommend, as are others of this series, as an excellent introduction for K-12 students to the world and plays of William Shakespeare.