Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing (Shakespeare's Globe)

Apparently Shakespeare's Globe is out of the worst of its post-lockdown budget hole, which hopefully means Michelle Terry (who let's not forget chucked The Two Noble Kinsmen into her inaugural season) won't be quite as obliged to programme just the hits, which has essentially seen the venue having to reboot A Midsummer Night's Dream and Much Ado About Nothing in alternate years. But for the time being it's an even-numbered year so I guess it's the latter they have to find a new take on, even as Lucy Bailey's production still feels fresh in my memory. At least Much Ado is a play the Globe rarely seems to fudge, and Sean Holmes' take on it is no exception. Grace Smart's design seems to take inspiration from the text's laboured pun on Seville oranges to set the action in an orange grove, and the cast seem to be liberally handing out fruit to the groundlings in a production that makes particularly good use of the shared space with the audience.

This is especially true of the play's most famous characters: Beatrice, niece of the landowner and Benedick, a soldier from a visiting regiment, clearly have a past, and as played by Amalia Vitale and Ekow Quartey still have feelings for each other they are determined to pretend aren't there.

Instead they trade witticisms and insults, until their friends and relatives decide to entertain themselves by tricking each into believing the other has confessed their love, in the hope that'll make it happen for real. Both actors quickly recruit the audience to their cause, each trying to get the crowd on their own side in the battle of barbs. And this is a pairing that's really strong on delivering the witty dialogue - even if I was unsure at first if Vitale was going to give us a bit too much of a husky declamatory performance, they both settle on something very natural, speedy and with a great comic rhythm that gets the laughs starting quickly.

If this duo are the play's big guns, what's often a problem is everything surrounding them, as Beatrice's cousin Hero (Lydia Fleming) finds herself very quickly contracted to be married, falsely accused of cheating and shamed for it at the altar, and having to fake her own death, all while previously sympathetic male characters viciously turn on her. Holmes deals with this by giving us the broad comedy of the first half without making the soldiers outright heroes: Don Pedro (Ryan Donaldson) is a rather brash figure; although we do get the usual moment of sympathy for him when it appears he might actually have genuine feelings for Beatrice himself, he's largely pretty pleased with himself.

Adam Wadsworth, meanwhile, is one of those rare Claudios who makes some kind of sense: Although initially likeable enough, it's also clear he's essentially a brattish teenager, and Holmes' production makes it clear how much both he and Hero are abruptly thrown into their engagement off the back of the very briefest declarations of interest. We also see that, following the unnecessarily convoluted wooing plot, Hero's father Leonato (John Lightbody) is actually pretty furious to have got Claudio as a son-in-law instead of the prince he'd been expecting. Not only does this frosty welcome to the family give Claudio an added reason to flee the match as soon as he gets a chance, it makes Leonato more of a cold-blooded opportunist from the start rather than the usual affable paterfamilias, so his later viciousness towards his daughter followed by hypocritical claiming of the moral high ground make more sense.

With most of the upper-class men in the story handwaving their own involvement in events even after the truth comes out, it feels notable that Calum Callaghan's Borachio, technically one of the bad guys, is one of the few to show genuine remorse, and takes pains to make sure Emma Ernest's Margaret doesn't take the blame for her unwitting part in the deceit. Meanwhile, in the most broadly comic subplot Jonnie Broadbent is a foppish Dogberry straight out of Blackadder, too self-important to notice his deputy Verges (Colm Gormley) appears to be some kind of low-key sadistic sociopath. Dogberry's feud with Conrade (Dharmesh Patel) resulting in the latter being so infuriated by the watchman that he puts his own handcuffs on to shut him up is one of the memorable visual gags, alongside Quartey's Benedick stuffing orange peel into his ears to shut out all the hey nonny nonny.

Hopefully it'll be a longer break before the Globe has to bring this big-hitter out again, but given that at the moment it seems to be necessary you couldn't ask more from a Much Ado: Some fresh takes on the lines and characters, a consistently entertaining afternoon, and enough canny interpretation of the nastier elements of the plot that the sweetness doesn't come with too bitter an aftertaste.

PS: "Kill Claudio" gets a gasp. I don't know if I prefer that because it's rarer than a laugh, but I think it feels like the audience are more engaged with what's actually happening in the plot rather than just laughing at everything Benedick and Beatrice say.

Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare is booking in repertory until the 24th of August at Shakespeare's Globe.

Running time: 2 hours 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.