Introducing the Yohangza Theatre Company's production to their audience at Shakespeare's Globe, the actors playing Duduri (a re-creation of Puck as twin brothers) presented it in English with its informal title, ‘A Midsummer Night's Dream from the East’. On its numerous tours around the world, reviews of the production's infectious and unusual style suggestively fused its origin with the notion of a dream: for instance, ‘Dream from the East’, ‘A Korean Midsummer Night’ and ‘To Korea to Dream of Shakespeare’. Yet although the production's performance style strongly conveys the impression of belonging to South Korean theatre cultures or at least of having an Asian aesthetic, apart from the language spoken by the actors its Korean-ness or Asian-ness is not readily isolated or classified. Yohangza eclectically combined elements from Korean traditional performances without adopting any to a dominant or definitive extent.

More importantly, it transformed these traditional elements in a synthesis with elements from non-Korean genres, as well as some components that are entirely unique to this production. While contemporary intercultural productions that take this mix-and-match approach have been disparaged as opportunistic plunderings of traditions that put together a cultural buffet aimed at the festival market, this production's stylization and integration of its varied influences are so advanced as to create a single whole in which it is often difficult to establish with certainty that a particular element was drawn from one particular source. The signature image of the production is the elaborate, brightly coloured facial paint on a white base that distinguished the Dokkabi (golins who emerge at night) from the mortals. This make-up generically recalls the masks and facial paint that are an essential, prescribed part of many pre-modern theatre forms in Asia, like Beijing Opera or Kabuki. But its striking colours – details like the black lines drawn on the brow and cheekbones – and overall composition did not resemble the faces of any other form.