Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing(National Theatre)

The year's third major Much Ado About Nothing is the starriest, courtesy of John Heffernan and Future Dame Katherine Parkinson as Benedick and Beatrice at the Lyttelton. The National's go-to Shakespeare director Simon Godwin was best-known for directing new work when the RSC hired him to give a fresh eye to The Two Gentlemen of Verona nearly a decade ago, and while that was the start of a major change of direction for his career, he's still bringing that outsider's attitude to one of the most beloved comedies of all. Dialogue has been cut, moved, assigned to different characters, and while it's all Shakespeare's work it doesn't all necessarily originate in this play (there's even the best part of a sonnet bulking up Hero's role.) At heart the play - and its most famous couple - remain the same, but the irreverent treatment of the text yields results in making many of the plotlines and characters less problematic.

The setting is still Italy, but instead of a luxurious villa it's now the Hotel Messina, at some (rather vague) point in the mid-20th century. Leonato (Rufus Wright) and his wife Antonia (Wendy Kweh) are the owners and managers.

When a military regiment comes to stay, their daughter Hero (Ioanna Kimbook) is charmed by young soldier Claudio (Eben Figueiredo,) and a marriage is rather hastily arranged between them. As they wait for the wedding day, Don Pedro (Ashley Zhangazha) issues a challenge, to make the warring Beatrice and Benedick fall in love with each other. But unbeknownst to everyone, Pedro's brother Don John (David Judge) is playing a much more vicious game with people's lives and emotions.

The production's blurb describes the hotel as having opened in the 1930s although it's not quite clear when exactly this action takes place - it variously felt 1930s and 1950s to me, either one of which does beg some questions about who these people are. At least the Globe's current production, also set in a similar time and place, made sure we knew its soldiers didn't fight on the side of the fascists; this niggling question over whose army this is was pretty much the only major thing distracting me, in a show that's very much at pains elsewhere to fill the plot holes Shakespeare leaves.

It leads to an interesting refocusing on characters who aren't usually treated as central, particularly Phoebe Horn's Margaret, the servant who's inadvertently at the heart of the plot against Hero. We see a lot more of her as a comically, permanently horny character, and frankly who can blame her for making some rash decisions if Brandon Grace's eye-poppingly buff Borachio is stripping off in front of her. We also get a solution for why she doesn't speak up when Hero is wrongfully accused - she tries to, but we see Don John whisper a threat to her that leaves her visibly shaken. Don John himself is given the suggestion of some motivation for his otherwise senseless evil - the war has left him physically and perhaps psychologically scarred, and he wants to bring down the happiness of everyone else who seems unaffected by its horrors.

Giving Leonato a wife instead of a brother is also a great move that gets rid of the colossal hypocrisy of his reaction to the lies about Hero (honestly the main story really is more holes than plot, is it any wonder the play's more famous for its comic subplot, which is at least consistent?) Antonia, who as Hero's mother has believed her from the start and supported her, gets all the lines attacking Pedro and Claudio for their public shaming and "killing" of her daughter, and Kweh turns it into a powerful scene; Leonato has to have his own redemption journey in the background for not trusting Hero's word.

If I've focused on the plot innovations, which so target my pet hates it feels like Godwin's been reading every Much Ado review I've written in the last decade, that's not to say the production doesn't stand on its own as a comedy. Parkinson and Heffernan are strong enough comic actors that there was little doubt they'd be a class act as Beatrice and Benedick, and they deliver a pairing with some genuine vulnerability among the laughs, and their respective comic setpieces are the right kind of slapstick, especially Heffernan ending up covered in ice cream toppings. Meanwhile Parkinson manages to stand out even against the distraction of a truly alarming collection of headwear, courtesy of costume designer Evie Gurney.

The even broader comic subplot about the night watch is also well-served: Turned here into the hotel's security team, David Fynn's Dogberry is also heavy on the slapstick but not in an overegged way - after a good run of well-judged comic performances in the role I have to remember not to let my guard down, or I'll go into a Much Ado unprepared for the nonsensical gurning and overplayed malapropisms Dogberry seems to attract*. Gender-flipping to a Georgina Seacole (Olivia Forrest) means Dogberry even gets a suggestion of a romantic interest, and gets to join in all the couples dancing at the end. Anna Fleischle's set is attractive although at times the cast seem to be battling against it. On balance, I think of the current London Much Ados I'd probably direct you to the Globe's offering rather than this one, but neither disappoints.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is booking until the 10th of September at the National Theatre's Lyttelton.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Manuel Harlan.

*don't worry, I'll never let my guard down; I'm pretty sure the first Much Ado I ever saw was the SirKenBran film with Michael Keaton, so my flinching at the prospect of Dogberry is a long-ingrained Pavlovian reaction