Peter Viney's Blog

Much Ado About Nothing
By William Shakespeare

Directed by Josie Rourke (stage)
TV recording directed by Robert Delamere
Designed by Rob Jones

Wyndhams Theatre, London
2011

Now available on DIGITAL THEATRE PLUS via YouTube
(£7.99 for one play, £9.99 monthly subscription)

CAST
David Tennant – Benedick
Catherine Tate- Beatrice, Leonato’s niece
with
Tom Bateman – Claudio
Adam James – Don Pedro,
Elliot Levey – Don John
Sarah MacRae – Hero, Leonato’s daughter
Alex Beckett – Borachio
Jonathan Coy- Leonato
Anna Farnworth- Innogen, Leonato’s wife
Lee Knight – Conrade
John Ramm – Dogberry, Constable of the Watch
Mike Grady – Verges, Deputy Constable
Nicholas Lumley- George Seacole, member of the Watvh
Clive Hayward – Hugh Oatcake, member of the Watch
Enzo Squillino Jnr- Sexton, a local official
Clive Hayward – Friar Francis
Enzo Squillino Jnr- Balthasar, a musician
Kathryn Hunt- Ursula
Natalie Thomas- Margaret
Mario Marin-Borquez – Boy, Maria’s son
Hannah Warren-Green – Maria
Joshua Berg, Titus, a servant

It’s on Digital Theatre Plus now, a promising site. We subscribed to Digital Theatre Plus  for a month to see this and couldn’t get it from my computer to the Sony Smart TV. Hopefully that will be sorted out … after all Amazon Prime and Netflix and BBC iPlayer can do it with passwords. The website talks about linking it by wire from a laptop or inserting a dongle. This is clearly madness.  Have they seen the average age of their likely subscribers outside London? So it’s reviewed on a 27″ iMac. They have Mahler concerts available and I really wouldn’t want to hear those on computer speakers.

This one predated my reviews blog, and I didn’t see it at the time, but have often heard it mentioned. The early 2010s were the era for this sort of TV star pairing in West End theatres … witness Michael Grandage’s season of such vehicles, especially A Midsummer Night’s Dream with Sheridan Smith and David Walliams. I’ve trawled the original reviews, and it got some snotty and arsy ones from those critics who find TV stars filling the seats with happy audiences beneath their lofty view. However, David Tennant is far more than Dr Who (a role they all mention) as a brilliant stage actor, and Catherine Tate proved yet again that TV comedy stars (Sheridan Smith, David Walliams, Matt Lucas … they rarely fail) will do very well in the right Shakespearean roles. The thing about this production is that the glamorous and moody poster above is incredibly misleading …  both the leads look as if they’re having SO much fun playing with the roles, playing with the Shakespearean language and finding new pauses and emphasis.

Catherine Tate and David Tennant: They’re having fun. They’re a joy to watch together.

It’s a pity that so many sites with great reviews such as The Telegraph and The Times put up paywalls for archive articles. Yet again, all praise to The Guardian for still letting us see what Michael Billington thought of it. For a decade, I’ve found The Guardian and The Telegraph have the best play reviews, and neither of them are snotty about “TV stars” either.

David Tennant as Benedick (This is the Kill Claudio! scene)

The lasting impression of David Tennant is that all the Shakespearean dialogue flows so naturally from him that it doesn’t even sound sightly archaic. Possibly his Scottish accent helps … we have expectation of less frequent words like bairn or wee from Scots … words which we understand but don’t use. Mainly it’s a masterclass in relaxed Shakespearean delivery. Perfect pointing. Perfect timing.

Catherine Tate as Beatrice

Catherine Tate utilises all the gestures and expressions which we know from her TV show. Some critics were snooty  on the “serious bits” but with no foundation to us.

The rest of the cast is extremely strong in 2020 terms, but I guess they were talent spotting in 2011 and doing it well. I never used to link the other reviews featuring actors on this blog, and it took a long time with this one … and they’re all “subsequent” (because this predates the blog obviously) … they’ve all done very well.

Tom Bateman as Claudio + Clive Hayward as Friar Francis (a navy chaplain)

Tom Bateman was on his way to better things, and is a handsome Claudio, a hunk, towering over everyone else. He has to cope with a major innovation at Hero’s alleged tomb, when he knocks back the Tequila, then takes out his service pistol about to shoot himself. It’s not in the text so jars the Shakespeare scholar’s sensibility. I can see why the director did it. The  protestations of grief in the text always appear somewhat blithe, and once you put it in modern dress (virtually inevitable with the play) the outraged honour is hard to get across. So they decided to accentuate it. It may work if your memory of the play is sketchy … or on a second viewing. it’s a tad ‘sore thumb’ initially.

Sarah MacRae as Hero, falsely and cruelly accused …

Sarah MacRae is the actor we’ve seen most often on stage and is an admirable heroine as Hero (what?) – and face it, Hero is a crap role for an actor, far too heavy on the swooning. She’s so passive in the text that there’s nowhere much to go – except in gleefully plotting Beatrice’s ‘over hearing’ scene.

Adam James as Don Pedro, John Lamm as Constable Dogberry

Adam James plays Don Pedro as the avuncular senior officer, on friendly officer’s mess terms with his juniors. Most senior military officers I’ve met are like his Don Pedro, affable, easy to talk to.

Elliot Levey as Don John

Elliot Levey’s Don John is a serpentine slime, twisted with jealousy. He does it all with expressions, and adds all sorts of depths to lines like I am not made like other men.

Proud Dad: Sarah MacRae as Hero, Jonathan Coy as Leonato

Jonathan Coy as Leonato is superb casting again – and he takes the outraged father scene as well as I’ve ever seen it done.

Alex Bennett as Borachio (with Don John)

I’m not sure how careful they were with the insignia for naval ranks, but Don John and Benedick seem to be of equal rank, and Borachio (Alex Bennett) is an officer too rather than a sergeant or servant to Don John.

Benedick (David Tennant), Don Pedro (Adam James) and Claudio (Tom Bateman)

It’s set in Gibraltar in 1982 and our returning military men are navy officers in tropical whites uniforms, so perhaps returning from The Falklands. Our sailors arrive in a patriotically decorated golf cart – how directors love getting a vehicle on stage.

Leonato (Jonathan Coy) has acquired a wife and Hero a mother.

The major innovation is that Hero’s mum has appeared, replacing her Uncle Antonio and taking his lines. Theatre in 2011 wasn’t as fanatic about 50 / 50 male- female casting as 2020 (fortunately) but it was a reasonable move in having more female roles. I guess it slightly undermines Leonato’s lone parent angst. They’ve named her Innogen, for no apparent reason. As her name only appears later it was puzzling. As she has AntoniO’s lines, AntoniA would have been the choice for me. She sits distraught at the accusation scene, but it’s a problem. She needs to say something, but it’s not in the text. While you can slide in additions in comic bits for effect, you can’t really in serious sections. I’m not sure why she’s been given a slight accent, but I know nothing of Gibraltar. The examining magistrate sounds a little Spanish too.

The stage set is a circular room with floor to ceiling plantation shutters. The centre is a revolve stage with three pillars. It is not only used in the standard revolve stage fashion … for changing sets, but more as a slow roundabout revealing (say) both sides of the overhearing plotting scenes. In the church scenes, it is used in a standard way.

In the masked ball, Benedick is done up in drag, while Beatrice is in a man’s suit, albeit more Two-Tone band member than City Gent.

The plotters’ scene – where they set up Benedick and Beatrice is always the one for a director to go to town. Benedick’s scene has two painters in the background and a trestle table full of paint tins, so that he gets ever more covered with paint.

David Tennant as Benedick

Beatrice’s plotter’s scene has her connected to a flying hook and hoisted high in the air struggling about, terrified that she’s about to have her cleavage fall out. She’s being balance by a painter on the other hoist – so it’s as if the painters had installed it to reach the top of the walls. This is one where a couple of reviewers got really snotty. I don’t get it. If William Shakespeare had had a flying rope, and a well-endowed actress as Beatrice, I guarantee he’d have made full use of it.

The Watch: L to R George Seacole (Nicholas Lumley), Hugh Oatcake (Clive Hayward), Verges (Mike Grady), Dogberry (John Ramm)

The Watch is a section you can play with. Here Dogberry (John Ramm) is dressed in macho Desert Storm gear – one review said Rambo gear. The rest all look like respectable older, well-spoken expats in their khaki shorts, in contrast to the normal cast of village idiots. George Seacole is terribly nice, struggling to speak Spanish when he orders a drink. The pillars again prove useful for listening to Borachio and Conrade revealing the dastardly plot to frame Hero.

Then there’s the wedding preparation and accusation. They missed one on Beatrice’s streaming cold … it’s a good idea to get her cold and wet in the previous scene, but Catherine Tate snotted with gusto anyway.

L to R: Claudio, Don Pedro, Hero, Leonato, Innogen, Beatrice, Don John, Benedick.

In the wedding and accusation, the eyes (or film direction) lead to Tennant and Tate’s reactions. That’s followed by the Kill Claudio! scene between Beatrice and Benedick. Phew! Both are excellent – and you have the benefits of film close up on both.

L to R: Sexton, Dogberry, Verges, Seacole, Conrade (behind) Borachio

The Watch take Borachio and Conrade to the “local official” (more usually magistrate) who is delightfully reluctant to get heavily involved.

David Tennant looks so meaningfully fierce when he challenges Claudio (though it’s somewhat “challenges him to what?”) that my money would have been on him to win, in spite of Tom Bateman’s size advantage.

Costumes look great – all those light colours, Navy dress white uniforms, eighties cut off shorts and eighties colours. It must have been a nightmare for wardrobe on matinees … though I assume they had at least two of everything.

The filming is particularly fine- better than the average filmed theatre, and that’s greatly aided by the usually well-lit set and bright lighting … like all streamed theatre the dark bits (the two parties) suffer greatly in comparison to being there.

I’m going for 5 stars. Karen says it is the best Much Ado she’s seen. I disagree, I think in several ways the RSC Love’s Labours Won / Much Ado About Nothing from 2014 and 2016 with Edward Bennett as Benedick is my favourite (with the best ever overhearing scene), and on that I’d just choose the 2016 revival at Chichester with Lisa Dillon as Beatrice over the 2014 first version with Michelle Terry as Beatrice.

Whatever. Comparisons with several years gap are always a little silly. They’re all three 5 star productions.

*****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****

The pairing of David Tennant as Benedick with Catherine Tate as Beatrice is a marriage that, if not made in heaven, is certainly cemented by television and pays off superbly … Lucy Gaiger’s costumes, combining naval whites with snazzy civilian colours, add greatly to the gaiety of an evening that suggests the Tate-Tennant partnership should be pursued. Why not try their hand at Restoration comedy or Coward’s Private Lives?

Charles Spencer, Telegraph ****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, ****

Examples of the “snotty” ones:

3 star
Paul Taylor, The Independent ***

It’s important that Beatrice and Hero live in a household with no older female authority figure. Rourke invents a mother for Hero and equips the character with the scant lines assigned to the uncle in the play. All this cipher can do is look pained and ineffective. It’s typical of a production that is over-interpreted and insufficiently thought-through.

Don’t use ratings

Matt Wolf, NY Times

Here they are, selling out Wyndham’s Theatre through the summer, playing those eternally chary lovebirds, Beatrice and Benedick, to an audience that has come to cheer and presumably likes their Shakespeare spiced up with the music of Wham, cutoff jeans, and bare chests and cleavage on eye-catching display. Somewhere within Josie Rourke’s production lies an actual play about two sparring partners laying bare their verbal defenses so they can learn to love, but you’d be forgiven for missing it amid the cigarettes and booze and the Benidorm holiday vibe.

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

• Much Ado About Nothing- Wyndhams 2011
  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 – FILM – Joss Whedon, 2013

DAVID TENNANT (stage)
Don Juan In Soho by Patrick Marber, Wyndhams, 2017
Richard II, RSC, 2013

SARAH MACRAE
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Globe 2013 (Helena)
The Two Gentlemen of Verona, RSC 2014
The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster, Wanamaker Playhouse 2014
The Broken Heart by John Ford, Wanamaker Playhouse
The Changeling by Middleton & Rowley, Wanamaker Playhouse 2015

TOM BATEMAN
The Winter’s Tale, Branagh Season, Garrick 2015 (Florizel)
Harlequinade, by Terence Rattigan, Branagh Season, Garrick 2015
Shakespeare in Love (Will Shakespeare), Noel Coward Theatre 2014
The Duchess of Malfi (Old Vic), 2012, Antonio

JONATHAN COY
Peter Gynt, National Theatre, 2019
Ivanov, Young Chekhov Season, Chichester 2015
Platonov, Young Chekhov Season, Chichester 2015
Black Comedy by Peter Shaffer, Chichester 2014
The Magistrate, by Pinero, National Theatre 2013

ADAM JAMES
King Charles III, by Mike Bartlett, Wyndhams, 2014
King Charles III, TV adaptation, 2017
An Enemy of The People by Ibsen,. Chichester 2016

ELLIOT LEVY
Coriolanus, Donmar, 2014
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, BBC TV 2016