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

If A Midsummer Night's Dream is the Open Air Theatre's signature Shakespeare, Much Ado About Nothing feels like it occupies a very similar place at the Globe. I could definitely do with longer gaps between new productions - they do start to blend into each other in my memory and I sometimes wish for a bit more distance from the last one to let the next fresh take make its mark - but while some have been better than others the venue has never served up a completely duff one as long as I've been going there. Chelsea Walker's production doesn't buck that trend either: Not a particularly high-concept one apart from Sami Fendall's designs taking a lot of inspiration from the weddings the plot revolves around - a lot of white, floral displays and the musicians decked out as a wedding band, playing old standards that punctuate the comedy and sometimes troll the characters.

You don't particularly get the sense that most of the male characters have come straight from a war - they're celebrating a victory at the villa of the wealthy Leonato (Jonathan McGuiness,) whose daughter Hero (Assa Kanouté) catches the eye of one of the soldiers.

But while Hero and Claudio (Joshua John) go through various plots and misunderstandings to get together, a misanthropic villain is devising his own counter-plots to break them up, and when he makes allegations about the young woman's chastity, most of the men in the story are all too quick to take them at face value and slut-shame her.

Joseph Potter's Don John is less aloof villain, more coked-up psychopath, so Marlowe Chan-Reeves' Borachio and Matilda Bailes' Margaret may be working with him more out of fear than anything else; Walker addresses head-on one of my pet peeves, where Margaret tends to be onstage during the foiled wedding, saying nothing about a plan she was inadvertently part of. Here she's visibly traumatised by her part in her lady's downfall, but I didn't think it was ultimately pulled off as it's still unclear what's stopping her from speaking up.

With theatres always looking for interesting ways to get more female roles into Shakespeare, I thought it was a clever move to turn the Friar into a Sister; one of the few characters to trust and defend Hero despite barely knowing her, Geraldine Alexander's no-nonsense nun makes sense in the role, and may be in part empowering the more forthright Hero we see at the end.

In the most broadly comic subplot, we're in safe hands as Richard Katz' Dogberry avoids the pitfalls actors inexplicably throw themselves into with this role: No overplaying of the malapropisms and a couple of his own thrown in (Gazpacho for Borachio,) he's a bit of a Cockney wide-boy who wants to do the job properly but doesn't mind if it makes him a bit of extra cash on the side, all the whole wrangling Os Leanse's neurodiverse-coded Verges.

The play will always be most famous for its archetypal battling rom-com characters: Pippa Nixon's Beatrice and Ken Nwosu's Benedick really take pleasure in their constant digs at each other, and aren't afraid to call attention to some of Shakespeare's more laboured puns (I'm looking at you, Civil Orange.) They're characters who set the tone for the production, which here includes a very quick, snappy but clear delivery of the lines that propels the evening; they're also suitably lovable when they start to thaw towards each other.

Overall this isn't a very high-concept Much Ado but it's a consistently funny one. It doesn't get bogged down in the toxic elements but doesn't ignore them either - if they're not quite recognisably soldiers the young men are laddish with the slight hint of danger that implies, typified by Adam Long's Don Pedro and his affability which always has the undertone of his own superiority. The lads lads lads approach extends to us seeing Claudio on his stag night, and I don't suppose too many people will be complaining about his outfit for that either.

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

Running time: 2 hours 30 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Marc Brenner.