After his innovative and award-winning opera productions and a recent highly acclaimed production of Pirandello’s Six Characters in Search of an Author, Richard Jones makes his Royal Shakespeare Company debut directing A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But Jones is quick to deny that his previous opera and theatre experience influences his approach. For him, what’s important is to portray as honestly as he can what is there in the script. He recognises the difficulties of not having preconceptions: “Almost everybody gets to know Dream from a very early age.”

One consequence of Jones’s approach is that you won’t see the royal doubling (TheseusOberon and HippolytaTitania) that has recently been fashionable, so this touring production will have an unusually large cast of 20 actors.

Jones is aware that interpretations of this hyper-imaginative play can differ wildly: “There is no such thing as a definitive or accurate production.” But he emphasises the mythic, dream-like qualities he finds in the play, “like that curious period as you are just falling asleep - on the cusp. Your sense of time becomes distorted, but somehow your memory is enhanced and potent.”

The outcome for this production will be a hint of modern settings and costumes. It is perhaps significant that in a year that has seen the death of the writer Jan Kott, whose shadow has lain across all Dream productions since Peter Brook’s 40 years ago, there will be no striving to make specifically “contemporary” connections. Athens will not be a repressed, tyrannical society. Jones’s production will give full weight to the hallucinatory effects of the magic potion, but you won’t be reminded of modern drug culture.

The production will realise the erotic potency of the text, but it will not be the dominating feature. It’s much more likely that audiences will remember the fairy world. Jones imagines it as primitive and sensual. How will that emerge in performance? “Oberon and Puck will be black shapes, like ink blots.” Intriguing!

Rex Gibson Tickets: 01789 403403. Tour details: 01789 296655.Each venue will host a one-hour pre-performance presentation for schools in which the production team and cast reveal backstage and rehearsal aspects of their work. Post-show discussions with the company, open to full audience. For education information, see www.rsc.org.uk or call 01789 403440. A Midsummer Night’s Dream will be performed at Shakespeare’s Globe this summer. Tickets, from February 13: 020 7401 9919