Theatre review: Much Ado About Nothing (RSC / RST)

Theatrical 2025 looks set to be memorable in part for Shakespeare productions whose high concepts tip over from the eccentric to the downright daft, and following Hamlet on the Titanic onto the RSC's main stage is Much Ado About Nothing, with Michael Longhurst's debut for the company moving the play from the world of soldiers and orange groves to that of professional footballers and WAGs. FC Messina have just won a European championship and the celebrations will be held at the home of the team sponsor, Leonato (understudy Nick Cavaliere,) a media mogul whose sports channels show all their games, with his niece Beatrice (Freema Agyeman) as one of the post-match interviewers. This is how she knows one of the players, Benedick (Nick Blood,) and the two have a brief sexual history that makes their encounters spiky to this day.

Theatre review: Superior Donuts

I imagine Tracy Letts is used to people assuming that he's a woman, especially with the likes of August: Osage County having plenty of good female roles. There's an unmistakeable dose of testosterone running through Superior Donuts though, as it receives its UK premiere at Southwark Playhouse's Little space. Ned Bennett directs the story of Arthur Przybyszewski (Mitchell Mullen,) an old hippie still running (in the loosest sense of the word) the donut shop established by his parents in the 1950s. Quite how he's managing to hold onto it is a mystery, as he seems to give away more donuts than he sells, the Russian who owns the shop next door (Nick Cavaliere) keeps trying to buy the premises off him and the place doesn't look the most hygienic - even if you discount the fact that when we first see the shop it's been broken into and vandalised.