A company president gets framed with a food-poisoning scandal and the only person who can help him is the evening cleaning-woman who always seems to be in the right place at the right time.
When charismatic Chief of Surgery Charlie Harris of Toronto's Hope-Zion Hospital ends up in a coma he leaves the hospital in chaos – and his fiancée and fellow surgeon Alex Reid in a state of shock. Along with newly-arrived star surgeon Joel Goran Alex and her fellow doctors press on to save Charlie's life and those of their other patients as they deal with the complicated and courageous decisions that are made in their daily struggle to keep hope alive.
With its clearcut "play within a play" narrative and simple contrasts between the human and spirit worlds, A Midsummer Night's Dream has long been a popular introduction to Shakespeare, and Adrian Noble's 1994 RSC production reinforces why. It's a colourful and physical presentation (the latter explains the PG rating), portraying character confrontations with often reckless abandon. The ploy of giving the whole play the appearance of a child's dream is a neat touch that doesn't quite work, as the child himself, Osheen Jones, can have only a minimal amount to do on stage. Casting the main actors in dual roles works well. Alex Jennings is secure as Theseus and Oberon, but Lindsay Duncan all but steals the show as Hippolyta and Titania; her amorous encounter with Bottom, given with gusto by Desmond Barrit, has a lewd quality that Elizabethan audiences might have appreciated. Despite his dreadful 1980s hairdo, Barry Lynch is animated as Puck, while Emily Raymond's plaintive Helena is the pick of the lovers. Howard Blake turns in a sensitive and atmospheric score. On the DVD: The 16:9 anamorphic picture reproduces excellently in the widescreen format, Dolby Surround sound vividly conveying the spatial realism of Noble's staging. No subtitles, which could be a drawback, but the 12 access points divide the 99-minute production into educational-sized chunks. Sensibly edited, and imaginatively directed, this production ought to have wide appeal. --Richard Whitehouse
Art Garfunkel plays a moody American psychoanalyst whose mounting obsession with a beautiful fun-loving young girl drives her to the brink of death on a drug overdose. As he waits anxiously at the hospital and tries to answer police questions he recalls the details of the complex and tempestuous affair: their meeting their discovery of physical joy marred by mental anguish their constant separations and reconciliations. Yet is he telling the police the whole truth?
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