Peter Viney's Blog

By William Shakespeare

Directed by Simon Godwin
Set Design by Anna Fleische
Composer Michael Bruce

Lyttelton Theatre
National Theatre, London
Friday 15th July 2022, 19.30

CAST

Katherine Parkinson – Beatrice
John Heffernan – Benedick
Ashley Zhangazha – Don Pedro
David Judge- Don John
Rufus Wright- Leonato
Wendy Kweh – Antonia
Eben Figueiredo – Claudio
Ionna Kimbrook – Hero
Phoebe Horn – Margaret
David Fynn – Dogberry / singer

Olivia Forrest – Georgina Seacole / singer
Nick Harris – Verges
Kiren Kebaili-Dwyer – Balthazar
Ashley Gillaed – Lorenzo
Brandon Grace- Borachio
Ewan Miller- Conrade
Mateo Oxley– Valentino / Friar (understudied by Al Coppola)
Celeste Dodwell- Ursula / Dance Captain
Marcia Lecky – Volpe Puzo / Lady Justice

This happens often … the Royal Shakespeare Company, National Theatre and The Globe all decide to do the same play. This year it’s Much Ado About Nothing. This is the eleventh time I’ve reviewed it in a decade and the second this year. We were idly discussing who we’d cast in Shakespearean roles a couple of years ago, and my first choice for Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing was Katherine Parkinson. Great! It’s happened.

One of the underlying pleasures of the play is that even in Shakespeare’s day we realize that notes were being passed around in Stratford-upon-Avon, ’Pass it on, John Hall in form 4C at King Edward VI Grammar fancies Susanna Shakespeare in Form 3B at the Arden Convent School.’ It certainly happened between Bournemouth School For Boys and Bournemouth School For Girls. That’s a rapid plot summary for you.

It’s a play which fits well in any time period, and post World War Two and One are popular. The Guardian Saturday suggests it’s set on ‘The Italian Riviera in the 1930s’ while the curtain projection looks like the Amalfi Coast near Sorrento. The Italian Riviera is Liguria, between the French Riviera and Tuscany. Messina is in Sicily and in the original play, Leonato is Governor of Messina, then ruled by the Spanish Empire. On the other hand, he’s been demoted to hotel manager here, and it’s ‘The Hotel Messina’ which I guess could be anywhere, as there’s a Sorrento Hotel in Bournemouth. To clinch it though this is the programme note:

Hotel Messina, Sicily. An imagined past.

One of the programme essays is Imagining Shakespeare’s Messina.

The “hotel in Messina” setting was used by The Rose, Kingston in their 2018 production. The cuts mean that as well as a fuzzy location, we’re not sure quite who Don Pedro and Don John are (unless we’ve read that programme essay), except visiting military. We don’t even know that they’re Spanish princes. They’re soldiers on R & R. It doesn’t matter.

This has a much more elaborate set than average, or the hotel in The Rose production. The hotel is on a revolve stage with two levels. The lower level rotates and serves as hotel reception, the bar, the pool attendants’ room, the basement security office, the wedding chapel (which many hotels have). The five piece band play in the gallery, with a trad jazz / jump jive line up – trumpet, clarinet, double bass guitar, drums. David Fynn (also playing Dogberry) joins them as the singer. The music follows suit, and given the costumes with wide loose trousers, there’s a 1930s air, but it’s not specific and the bright colours don’t pinpoint that time. Go with the programme An imagined past. The gallery also serves as Don John’s hotel bedroom, and as Hero’s bedroom. It has a balcony section, which is put to great use.

The Lyttelton stage is an extremely wide conventional proscenium, and the width is filled in with wings with multiple doors. The ensemble are dressed in hotel uniforms, and there is much coming and going with comic overhearing of the principle characters. Margaret and Ursula are uniformed hotel staff. Dogberry, Verges and The Watch are the Hotel Security team in the same uniforms. The green of the trousers and dresses reminded me uncomfortably of a late 80s holiday in Florida. I had bought a cotton trousers and jacket set in exactly that shade of green. We went to breakfast the first morning only to find out it was the hotel staff uniform. People were asking me to bring iced water, their checks, why their Eggs Benedict had not arrived. I never wore it for the rest of the holiday.

The use of so many hotel staff coupled with a set that can operate easily in five areas (front, centre, left, right, centre inside downstairs, centre inside upstairs) means that this is a very fast-paced and smoothly fluid production. Rooms pop up from below the stage on both sides (reminding me of The Bridge’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream). We have a bath / sauna area pop up at one point. The set design will be one of the best of the year.The direction is impeccable.

The use of a large ensemble as staff carries over to the “play next door” in the Olivier, Jack Absolute Flies Again. This is not extravagant, and the RSC is doing much the same. They never used to list understudies so carefully in programmes, but they do nowadays because Covid testing will and does eliminate cast members. Having a large ensemble gives the essential understudies something productive to do, and as Valentino / The Friar was understudied (and seamlessly by Al Coppella) I’d assume they were one short in some parts.

Beatrice (Katherine Parkinson)and Benedick (John Heffernan) work well together. Both are superb actors anyway, and the roles suit them down to the ground. Beatrice on arrival seems more a regular hotel guest than Hero’s cousin. The beginning is re-arranged considerably as well as cut. All to good effect.

The over-hearing scenes were some of the better ones too (though being concealed and having stuff poured on you is by no means a first). They use a hammock just like the one in our garden. What happens to John Heffernan has happened to me. He did that so well. Then the outside balcony and climbing down gave a lot of fun with Katherine Parkinson excelling in that. I won’t spoil the jokes by going too far into these.

Rufus Wright is an outstanding Leonato, and straight parts amid comic mayhem are really hard to play. Antonio, who is Leonato’s brother and Hero’s uncle, has been changed into Antonia, her aunt in more than one recent production. Here Antonia (Wendy Kweh) is Leonato’s wife and Hero’s mother. The marriage service says with all my worldly goods I thee endow, and so she gets to take over many of Leonato’s lines. It works well. It also feels like a sensible rethink, rather than forcing women into male roles for the sake of gender balance … which is a lost cause in Shakespeare.

Claudio has a strong MLE (Multicultural London English) accent, innit. Given the similar hotel set, I have to think the Rose Kingston 2018 production was influential, as in that production Claudio had the same accent, bruv. Though the Rose version was a much more edgy and pugnacious Claudio. While I don’t seek RP on stage, I am never accent-blind. In years of audio and video recording, actors fall into three groups. One is, ’I don’t do accents’, which usually means they can do RP and just their natural local accent. Group two revels in their wide range of accents, listed at length in the casting bible, Spotlight (The Lenny Henry). Sometimes their self-assessment is optimistic. I’ve listened to actors doing their Mummerset or Mockney accent or worse, Southern Belle, and said, ’No, thank you, just stick with your own.’ Group three is ‘this is my accent. I don’t (can’t / won’t) do any other, so fuck you, Jimmy.(The Sean Connery). Some (far too many) drama schools encourage the Group Three attitude. Accents are never neutral. They convey a message and mood. MLE to we Provincial outsiders still retains a comic effect. Blame Sacha Baron Cohen’s Ali G. Blame The Misfits TV series. A snotty reviewer of the Upstart Crow on stage was offended by the use of Brummie as comic. It is. Shakespeare used Welsh as funny. Accents can be used to be funny.

In this Don John has a light ‘Mancunian in a hoodie’ accent which TV has taught us is mildly villainous. Conrad has light Scottish. I thought both Don Pedro (Ashley Zhangazha) and Don John (David Judge) worked in an ensemble production, but had less room to do stuff than others have in the roles, partly because they fuzz over who they are. As Prince of Aragon in the Spanish Empire, Don John in the original would have been a man with great power. In some ways that fuzziness benefits the play’s focus overall.

Ionna Kimbrook was Hero, and managed to make something of it. I suspect that female actors look on both Hero and Ophelia as major name roles that are not going to make anyone’s reputation because the lines aren’t there. She was one of the better Heros I’ve seen. Having a room with an outside balcony worked for the Borachio / Margaret ploy (pretending to be Hero).

Margaret is the second best female role in the play and Phoebe Horn shone in it.

The Watch? They irritate some. They work better if some of Dogberry’s more convoluted verbal excursions are cut (as here) or freely modernized. George Seacole became Georgina Seacole (not unusual in the increasingly desperate search for parts to cast women in) and she (Olivia Forrest) had a very funny physical scene in capturing the villains – and here Dogberry (David Fynn) became part of the capturer team. Olivia Forrest and David Fynn were the live singers in the finale too. There were additions. The spaghetti joke was a major addition, and had milage in its effects (watch it to see), and I liked the Watch – mainly Verges – veering off into Italian.

The costumes are first rate, and the main actors have nearly a dozen each. Combined with the magnificent set, as ever the National Theatre reeks ’loads of money.’ I have a bee in my bonnet on this one. I believe that these fabulous and expensive productions should be designed so that they can tour, and tours should be regarded as part of the job. I know some London-based actors will then find themselves unavailable. The name is NATIONAL Theatre and there’s plenty of work in the West End for those who won’t tour the nation. It’s NATIONAL not LONDON THEATRE, and paid for from the national funds. Those of who travel in suffer quite enough from train prices and delays, or given strikes and the rise in covid cases, swingeing congestion and low emission zone charges. We spent £55 on those, and £41 on parking (hotel £25, National Theatre £16) in our thirty hours in London. (Incidentally, that’s still cheaper than the train would have been).

So that’s what’s wrong with the Lyttelton’s wide, wide stage. Sets won’t translate easily to many other theatres. Still, this one will be live streaming to cinemas in September which is the best practical solution. Catch it.

PROGRAMME

The programme had the National Theatre ’undesigned’ generic blank pinkish cover with three erudite academic essays on the play for A level students (who can look elsewhere), but nothing on why the director did it this way or how the actors saw it. I want stuff specific to this production. The programme looks wartime utility, soft paper, save the environment, but turn to the full colour advert on the back or glossy colour photos inside. It’s not environmentally friendly at all. Just ugly. I counsel looking at RSC programmes, which are the state of the art. One essay on THIS production, one erudite essay, one short but good plot synopsis.

RATING (We saw it before any press reviews)

I’m on five stars, Karen on four. As she says, she never much liked the play, and when you’re getting to a dozen versions in a decade, there is a tiresome inevitability in the plot that kicks in around the middle of the first wedding scene. True, but that can happen with any Shakespeare you’ve seen very often. I love the play, and have written an ELT adaptation as a graded reader, so I was aware that a lot of the final scenes were shaped unusually. I’m on a run of five star reviews. I’ve never given so many in a year and we’re only halfway. Either I’m getting soft, or it’s an incredibly good year because everyone’s raring to go after Covid. It’s not the absolute best version I’ve seen (RSC with Edward Bennett as Benedick, in its revived 2016 incarnation when Lisa Dillon took over as Beatrice). However it’s close. It’s very, very good. I’m persuaded I can’t keep giving fives this year. We’ll go for four. (Reduced from an earlier five).

****

WHAT THE PRESS SAID

I was still on five but Quentin Letts’ review in the Sunday Times sums up the issue of why it’s not:

The test of any Much Ado is the moment Beatrice goes icy and asks Benedick to “Kill Claudio.” If the audience laughs, the production lacks the proper depth of emotion. It happens here.

Quentin Letts, Sunday Times 24 July 2022

five star
Gary Naylor, Broadway World *****

four stars
Dominic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Arifa Akbar, Guardian ****
Clive Davis, The Times ****
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times ****
Andrzej Lukowski, Time Out ****
Marianka Swain, London Theatre ****

three star

Quentin Letts, The Sunday Times ***
Sam Marlowe, iNews ***
Mickey Jo Boucher ***
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ***
Helen Hawkins, The Arts Desk ***

two star
Nick Curtis, The Standard **

PREVIOUS PRODUCTIONS

• Much Ado About Nothing- Wyndhams, 2011 David Tennant, Catherine Tate
• Much Ado About Nothing – Old Vic 2013 James Earl Jones, Vanessa Redgrave
• Much Ado About Nothing – Globe 2014
• Much Ado About Nothing – RSC 2014 (aka Love’s Labour’s Won)
• Much Ado About Nothing – RSC 2016 revival
• Much Ado About Nothing – Globe 2017
• Much Ado About Nothing – Rose, Kingston 2018, Mel Giedroyc
• Much Ado About Nothing, Northern Broadsides, on tour, Salisbury 2019
• Much Ado About Nothing, RSC 2022
• Much Ado About Nothing, National Theatre 2022
• Much Ado About Nothing – FILM – Joss Whedon

LINKS TO DIRECTOR, CAST

SIMON GODWIN, Director
Romeo & Juliet (filmed), NT 2021
Timon of Athens, RSC 2018
Twelfth Night, National Theatre 2017
Hamlet, RSC 2016
Richard II, The Globe 2015
Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC, 2014
The Beaux Stratagem, National Theatre, 2015
Man & Superman, National Theatre, 2014
Candida, Theatre Royal, Bath, 2013

KATHERINE PARKINSON

Uncle Vanya, Bath Theatre Royal 2019 (Sonya)
Home, I’m Darling, by Laura Wade, National Theatre 2018

JOHN HEFFERMAN

Macbeth, Young Vic 2015 (Macbeth)

ASHLEY ZHANGAZHA
The Country Wife, Minerva Chichester 2018
Fences by August Wilson, Bath 2013 (Cory)
Henry V, Grandage Season, 2013 (chorus / boy)
Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O’Neill, Young Vic 2015 (Arthur)

DAVID JUDGE
Romeo & Juliet (filmed), NT 2021

IONNA KIMBROOK
Bitter Wheat, Garrick Theatre 2019

EBEN FIGUEIREDO
Young Marx, Bridge Theatre 2017
Pitcairn, Chichester Minerva Theatre, 2014