He was selected for two stage productions at the Open Air Theatre that summer in London’s Regent’s Park. Staging Shakespeare there was a summertime tradition that stretched back some 70 years. He would feature in the cast of two of the Bard’s comedies: A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Love’s Labour’s Lost. As we have established, Cumberbatch had already made his mark twice before in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Aged twelve, his take on the bumbling Nick Bottom the weaver had been a hit in the Brambletye Prep School production. A few years later, at Harrow, he was Demetrius. A decade on or so, with the comic performer Gary Wilmot playing Bottom, Cumberbatch would play Demetrius for a second time. Director Alan Strachan had revived the production the previous summer in Regent’s Park, transplanting it from the 1590s to the mid-nineteenth century. Most of the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream also spent the summer of 2001 on a second Shakespeare comedy, also directed by Strachan.
What do You think about Benedict Cumberbatch (2014)?
