Stage-to-screen review: Much Ado About Nothing(RSC / RST & BBC)

After Covid kept me away from Stratford-upon-Avon for two years, the aftermath of 1990s Gladiators winner Storm Eunice kept me away a bit longer when I was due to see the RST reopen with Roy Alexander Weise's take on Much Ado About Nothing. The BBC has come up with another chance to catch it though, with a filmed performance that's now available on iPlayer. Much Ado is set to be this year's most ubiquitous Shakespeare play, and another 2022 meme it's contributed to is the understudy having to permanently take over a lead role: Michael Balogun, himself the beneficiary of a sudden promotion, dropped out just before opening and Luke Wilson (not that one) got the plum role of Benedick. And he makes the most of the opportunity, easily becoming one of the best things in a frankly bizarre production whose high concept design overwhelms it.

Theatre review: Mr Foote's Other Leg

In what must be one of history's cruellest cases of nominative determinism, the 18th century actor Samuel Foote really did lose a leg. Ian Kelly adapts (and appears in) his own historical biography Mr Foote's Other Leg, in which Foote (Simon Russell Beale) meets fellow aspiring actors Peg Woffington (Dervla Kirwan) and David Garrick (Joseph Millson) at an elocution class. When their tutor, and the leading actor of his day, Charles Macklin (Colin Stinton) accidentally kills a co-star on stage he's banned from acting, and his students see an opportunity. With the Lord Chamberlain coming down hard on new plays, the three decide to focus instead on revivals of a respected but neglected playwright - William Shakespeare. For Garrick, the rest is history: He became one of the first superstar actors, and still has a London theatre named after him. And his love of Shakespeare proved infectious, helping create the icon we know today.