Friday 19 August 2022

THEATRE REVIEW: Much Ado About Nothing - Hope Mill Theatre, Manchester.


Not all of Shakespeare’s works are stuffy, political histories or histrionic tragedies, and 'Much Ado About Nothing', as the title suggests, is some of his lightest, and funniest, writing. Maybe this is why it is so popular at the moment, standing as an antidote to the woes of the world. The story centres on two potential love-matches: Hero and Claudio – smitten young lovers assisted to betrothal by Don Pedro; and Beatrice and Benedick – jaded and stubbornly single but easily manipulated to confess their true feelings. Don Jon (Don Pedro’s jealous, scheming brother) is the fly in the ointment and the bumbling, inept “Watch” provide both comic relief and evidence of Don Jon’s treachery.

The fourth in a series of predominantly female-cast reworkings of Shakespeare classics by this company, this production is a modern, bright and breezy adaptation of Shakespeare’s funny, ribald farce. This is not one for the Shakespeare purists - who in this reviewer’s opinion are too precious in any case! It is set in a modern back garden, with no deference to characters’ status, gender or age, is accompanied by a litany of '90’s pop hits, has naughty dashes of sexual activity, and is delivered in a natural, mainly Northern voice - and hurrah for all that! The cast relished their performance – it was high energy and fast-paced with lots of easy laughs along the way. The brilliant selection of music buoyed the atmosphere all night, making the whole thing feel like a week-end long house party.

Taken as a whole, and forgiving some slips of the choreographed business, HER Productions ostensibly gave us a fun-filled night. But the devil is in the detail and some attention to that detail was missing.  One point where the choreography was excellent was the masked ball – very funny and a great use of the remote-controlled music! But, we lost characterisation here as even Don Jon was happy and enjoying himself – despite his lines to the contrary very soon after. There were some entertaining set-pieces: the use of a neighbourhood watch sign; the seducing scene in the garden; and the scenes where Benedick and then Beatrice “hide” in plain sight, all of which gave rise to many laughs, but with a little more discipline in the delivery, they could have been hysterically funny. 

It is never easy condensing Shakespeare’s stories or combining characters, and some of the editing choices in the script led to some blurring of the lines in terms of story-line, chronology and characterisation. In the re-writing of Antonio as Innogen, moving from Leonato’s brother to his wife under-mined the character’s intentions making her less believable, especially at key moments in Act 2 – not the actor’s fault in my opinion, Janelle Thompson gave a good account of herself, playing well against Louise McNulty as Leonato. McNulty was a strong presence, who would have been at home in any of Caroline Aherne’s best writing. Lucy Keirl and Rachael Gill-Davis as Beatrice and Benedick were also well paired, as both have a talent for timing and used their facial expressions to underline the delivery

With a high energy cast, pacey delivery of the dialogue, and a healthy disregard for the traditional reverence towards Shakespeare’s text, HER Productions played up to all the comic elements of this production, holding the audience’s interest and amusement all night.

Reviewer - Justine Sutcliffe
on - 18.8.22


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