Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing(Jamie Lloyd Company / Theatre Royal Drury Lane)

I went on quite a bit in my review of Jamie Lloyd's Tempest about the fact that the entire production seemed to exist only to satisfy an obscure beef that His Exalted Brittanic Excellency, The Right Rev. Dr Baron Dame Sir Andrew Lloyd Lord Webber BA (Hons) MEng, QC, MD, P.I, FSB had with a dead man, and the way that was reflected in a production the director's heart didn't seem to be in. At least, whatever other reservations I might have with the second half of this Shakespeare season at Drury Lane, Lloyd's Much Ado About Nothing has the feel of a show he actually had an idea for. Another heavily edited text doesn't only lose a whole swathe of characters but also the play's military context: Soutra Gilmour's design leaves the huge stage mostly bare except for constantly-falling pink confetti, turning it into the dance floor of an 80's/90's- themed disco (although the amount of plot that's dependant on texts and people checking each other's Instagrams suggest we're in the present day.)

Wherever and whenever it is we are, it's all owned by Leonato (Forbes Masson,) whose daughter Hero (Mara Huf) has caught the eye of newcomer Claudio (James Phoon.) The two are quickly engaged, but one man isn't enjoying the party and is determined to spoil it for everyone else.

Don John (Tim Steed) is one of the elements of the production I'm not sold on: I suspect there's perfectly innocent reasons for making the play's arch-villain such an arch villain - a waspishly camp outsider alienated by all the heterosexual flirting going on around him - but there was a tone to the audience's laughter that suggested to me that's not quite how he's being interpreted. Add a completely throwaway gag about Leonato kissing the Friar (Phillip Olagoke) and it all left a bit of a nasty aftertaste.

I'm sure the intentions are good as the production is a lot cleverer in its casting of non-binary Mason Alexander Park as Margaret - it's done utterly casually, but not without being entertainingly acknowledged by Park when Beatrice asks if she should "dress [a beardless man] in my apparel and make him my waiting-gentlewoman?" Their powerful singing voice is also the star of the musical element of the show, although rather than "Hey Nonny Nonny" it's a torch song version of "Tell It To My Heart" that provides the evening's refrain.

Needless to say the inevitable star casting comes in the play's most famous couple and the prototype of the romantic comedy "hate-turning-to-love" trope, Beatrice (Hayley Atwell) and Benedick (Tom Hiddleston.) I like Atwell and her wry, dry, Crisp 'N Dry more melancholy than usual Beatrice doesn't disappoint. Hiddleston I've never been quite as sold on - he's not necessarily been bad in what I've seen him in before, but I tend to side with Phil Wang's opinion of him, which is along the lines of him giving the impression of a man who's never in his life been told he's not good at something.

Unfortunately this is very much the Benedick we get here, and while from the audience reaction I can't claim there aren't a lot of people who feel hot for Hiddles, the smugness with which the character is entirely tailored towards that kept me at a firm distance from the fun. I also felt like he was being given all the best comic moments at Atwell's expense: The pair's gulling scenes are often used as an excuse for some big, fun physical comedy scenes, and while Benedick gets a lot of business burying himself in the piles of confetti, Beatrice is more or less left on stage to fend for herself. She does, though, get his closing lines of "get thee a wife, get thee a wife," to Don Pedro (Gerald Kyd,) which makes for a bit of a sweeter ending - the object of his affection telling him to move on, rather than Benedick giving tone-deaf advice to the man in love with his new wife.

Lloyd has entirely excised the comic subplot involving Dogberry and the Watch; as this ends in resolving the main plot something else would need to change, and I guessed correctly it would involve Margaret figuring out that her tryst with Borachio (Mika Onyx Johnson) was the device used to frame Hero (although it still means an otherwise bright character takes a hell of a long time to put two and two together.) After Ferdinand in The Tempest Lloyd continues to suggest he likes Phoon enough to keep him gainfully employed, but not enough to give him a likeable role, but the actor does manage to get a laugh out of how long it takes Claudio to work out that Hero isn't actually her own identical cousin at the wedding.

Fabian Aloise's dance sequences to '90s bangers are fun, and largely involve people slapping Phoon on the arse (as I noted in my Tempest review this is understandable) although the publicity might have overstated quite how dance-heavy the production is. But with the emphasis on the big pink party the play's lurch into extremely dark territory isn't really dealt with; Leonato suddenly carrying a gun when he's berating Pedro and Claudio for the things they said to his daughter (you know, the stuff that was a fraction as offensive as the things he said to her straight afterwards,) only confuses the tone even more.

So a mixed evening - there's definitely a fun premise here, and in stark contrast to Elektra a sense of embracing a new audience without either patronising them or talking over their heads. On the other hand the acknowledgment of the fact that it's star casting filling the hundreds of seats - we even have cut-outs of the leads as their Marvel characters brought on stage - goes a bit beyond tongue-in-cheek and into being the primary focus of the evening.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is booking until the 5th of April at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane.

Running time: 2 hours 25 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.