In the first three decades of the twentieth century, the Austrian-born Max Reinhardt was one of the most respected and internationally influential European theatre directors, renowned for productions that embraced popular and ‘classical’ repertoire, encompassing spectacle on a grand scale and intimate, ‘chamber’ theatre. He was regarded as the principal exponent of Stimmungstheater (the theatre of atmosphere) and he was habitually identified as a ‘magician’. Reinhardt's dealings as a director with A Midsummer Night's Dream began in Berlin at the Neues Theater in 1905 and ended in the United States three decades later, with the film he co-directed for Warner Bros. with William Dieterle. In the course of those years he had staged the play more than a dozen times, in many kinds of space indoors and out, from the Boboli Gardens in Florence to the Hollywood Bowl. He often returned to plays, reworking them for new theatres and audiences, but like The Miracle, Faust and Jedermann, this was a play that Reinhardt obsessively revisited throughout his career. Lady Diana Cooper, who played both the erring nun and the Madonna in revivals of The Miracle (sometimes both on the same night), observed that he was ‘too rich in invention to tolerate satisfaction’.

By 1930 Reinhardt's productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream had reached a total of 427 performances in Berlin and Vienna alone, not counting the numerous tours. Making ‘these visions’ appear in the theatre was a vital part of his vision of the theatre.