Much Ado About Nothing
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre
Stratford-upon-Avon
 

ARGUABLY Shakespeare’s least poetic play, Much Ado About Nothing demonstrates his consummate stage craftsmanship in welding themes, moods, and theatrical styles together.

Centred on contrasted couples, with the conventionally enamoured Claudio and compliant Hero set against the modern combative witty scepticism of Benedick and Beatrice, the play questions the nature of love in a context which moves from high to tragi-comedy, laced with farce, and beset with intrigue, deceit and trickery.

However, one wouldn’t necessarily gather this from Roy Alexander Weise’s new production of Shakespeare’s mixed bag of a rom-com which could be summed up in Benedick’s description of Mohammed Mansaray’s love-struck Claudio’s language — “a very fantastical banquet, just so many strange dishes.”
 
In fact, the credit, if that is the right term, for this audience-delighting show should rightly go to Melissa Simon-Hartman, whose array of exotic costumes tend to overpower the eye at the expense of the words.

After the interval, however, as the play moves from establishing the plot to its high point, when Claudio, tricked by the villainous Don John into believing that Hero has known “the heat of a luxurious bed, cruelly rejects her at the altar,” the play reasserts itself.

Designer Jemima Robinson tells us she has drawn on a “hybridisation of cultures, bringing together African and European culture.” The effect is one of non-stop energy from a talented, almost all-black cast, but again the kaleidoscopic colourful costumes at times create difficulty in distinguishing the characters.

The choice to change the sex of some characters creates few difficulties, although when Ann Ogbonna as Don Pedro teasingly suggests marriage to Beatrice her refusal, explaining she would need a replacement husband “for working days,” produced some audience hilarity.

As always in this play the central interest is in the pithily playful battle of wits between Benedick and Beatrice. If Akiya Henry’s Beatrice is at times rather too shrill, Luke Wilson’s Benedick, who came into the production late as an understudy replacement, has seized the opportunity. If it were football, he would be man of the match.

If this production makes no demands other than being entertained, then perhaps it is one appropriate for the times.

Runs until  March 12 2022. Box Office rsc.org.com