Peter Hall’s Productions

Abstract

The modern director who has returned to the play most frequently is Peter Hall. A tentative experiment at Stratford in 1959 led to very successful revivals at Stratford in 1962 and at the Aldwych Theatre in London in 1963, and then to a film released in 1969. Peter Hall said that each production was ‘a development of previous knowledge’ (Sunday Times, 26 Jan. 1969). In 1981 he directed Benjamin Britten’s operatic version at Glyndebourne. Britten re-created the essence of the Dream in musical terms with such astonishing success that Peter Hall’s work on the opera was at the same time the latest stage in his developing interpretation of Shakespeare’s play.