Dame Judi in Midsummer Night's Dream


I’m not sure “down time” is a phrase that is in Judi Dench’s vocabulary. Appearing in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Rose Theatre in Kingston, Ms. Dench is fresh off of her recent roles in both Cranford and Return to Cranford, seen on PBS stations nationwide and the film, Nine,  not to mention her upcoming roles in the rumored Bond 23 film and the new adaptation of Jane Eyre. Let’s also not forget the 10+ years spent as Jean Pargetter on As Time Goes By.

AMNDProd8.jpgInteresting trivia is that A Midsummer Night’s Dream reunites Dench with director Peter Hall who have enjoyed a theatrical partnership for some 50 years beginning back in 1962 when Dench first played Titania for Peter Hall with the Royal Shakespeare Company. This most recent adaptation of Shakespeare’s work is set in Elizabethan England, with Titania, played again by Dench, as a portrait of the ageing Queen Elizabeth I, fascinated with the theatre, besieged by courtiers but ‘married to the people of England’.

Fueled by glowing reviews from the likes of The Times, The Guardian and The Independent, the play runs through 20 March 2010. I wonder what project she’ll start on on 21 March?


In: Actors/Actresses