In a production that sticks, very successfully, to what traditionally works best about the play itself, there is a little twist early on: Benedick and Beatrice (Lucy Phelps) are acknowledged by the play to have had a failed relationship in the past; here it's also suggested that Claudio and Hero (Nadi Kemp-Sayfi) have met and at least flirted before.
It makes a bit more sense of the speed with which the two are set up into a marriage, although down the line a bit less so of how little he really knows her, and how easily he's turned against her by lies. These come courtesy of one of Shakespeare's most enigmatic (/underwritten) villains, Don Pedro's bastard brother Don John (Olivier Huband,) assisted by the mercenary Borachio. In this afternoon's performance Philip Cumbus covered the role for an indisposed Ciarán O'Brien, and he's either a quick study or has been covering the part for a while*, because he not only performed off-book but gave Borachio more personality than I usually see in the role‡.
There's nothing high-concept about Bailey's production, but as we saw in the RSC's last attempt, a high concept can drown a play as easily as it can illuminate it, and this is a joyous Much Ado. I often get tangled up in reviews of the play by the way it's much darker and more problematic (both in terms of very unpleasant behaviour and clunking plot-holes) than it's often credited with, but Bailey avoids this largely by the medium of acknowledging it. Yes, the first half is a light, witty romantic comedy with likeable leads, and yes, the second is a big shift in tone to a truly nasty shaming of Hero by virtually everyone (the fact that it's for something she didn't do is, to modern eyes, almost incidental,) alternating with the much broader comedy of the Watch, which will eventually come to the main plot's rescue.
I still find Leonato/a's treatment of her daughter a sticking point. Stephens plays her as a sad widow, possibly quite recently bereaved in the war, who gradually finds her joy again as the soldiers stay and party, but is then gutted again by the accusations against her daughter. Here she doesn't so much join in the chorus of attacking Hero as she's desperately disappointed by it, but it doesn't change the fact that while Benedick and the Friar (Peter Bourke,) who barely know Hero, believe her reaction is genuine, her own mother doesn't. Meanwhile I missed how exactly Bailey got rid of Margaret (Rachel Hannah Clarke) during the wedding scene, but it does divert from the plot hole that she could have spoken up and resolved the whole thing straight away.
As for that broad comic subplot, the wildly unpredictable Globe career of George Fouracres takes him from Hamlet to Dogberry, a role that seems to invite more annoying hammy takes than any other in Shakespeare. Fortunately this isn't one of them, although it's not without eccentricities: Fouracres plays down the famous malapropisms, instead making Dogberry a sort of pretentious sergeant-major type, possibly with a darker undertone of some mental scarring from the war; the latter helps make sense of how badly he takes the slight of Conrade (Bourke) calling him an ass. Which isn't to say it isn't a reliably funny performance, with a lot of physical comedy including him trying to navigate a bike around the groundlings, and him and Joanne Howarth's Verges getting caught up in the same ropes they've tied their prisoners with.
But this is Much Ado About Nothing which can stand or fall on its Beatrice and Benedick, and the Globe has another great pair on its hands here. Phelps is an instantly loveable Beatrice, with little malice in her barbed comments either to Benedick or the groundlings, very much the "all mirth and no matter" woman who takes pleasure in the cleverness of her comebacks rather than meaning anything hurtful by them. Davis is a bona fide #SexyBenedick with a twinkle in his eye who knows he's a #SexyBenedick and gets his tits out at the slightest excuse. It's what Shakespeare would have wanted. Their individual gulling scenes are energetic without being too gimmicky (Benedick being chased around the bushes by Howarth's Antonia wielding garden shears, Beatrice getting doused by a sprinkler) and they're also very sweet together, their first kiss at the aborted wedding deserving the cheer it gets.
In fact this is one of those shows that you can really feel the whole building, now back to pretty much full capacity, get excited for. One of the pleasures of the Globe is being able to see so much of the audience when a show's really working, and here a mostly young crowd in the yard were visibly having a great time. I could nit-pick that, as often happens here, the action is directed a bit too much end-on when really it would be useful to block almost as if the space is in the round; I'd also suggest light comedy wordplay isn't best served by having four accordions played over it. But if it's not perfection it's certainly a very strong production that knows the strengths of both the play and the venue, and plays to them very confidently. Also Antonia turns up to the ball dressed as an actual radish, which isn't something you see every day.
Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 23rd of October at Shakespeare's Globe.
Running time: 2 hours 55 minutes including interval.
Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.
*the fact that Cumbus appears in one of the publicity photos, in a different role normally played by George Fouracres, suggests a third option: In the past the Globe never carried understudies, and often had to bring someone in at the last minute to read in a role, but maybe with the increased risk of someone having to isolate they've found the budget to keep a couple of dependable actors on standby for multiple roles
‡reminiscent of a little over a decade ago in the same play and theatre, when he was pretty much the only Claudio I've ever seen make the character even come close to being likeable
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