Reader Reviews
Much Ado About Nothing (Swan Theatre, Stratford-Upon-Avon)
Back to Show Details| Score | Comment | Date |
 | I loved this production,it is so funny and all of the cast were brilliant. Special praise should go to Yvette Rochester Duncun who's voice is amazing her blues number of "sign no more" was excellent. Jamie Ballard villiany kind of steals the show from Johnny Weir, who also does an excelent job. I loved the chemistry between the two lovers beatrice and benadict. If you can get tickets for it in London Go! It is worth it. - 86.53.56.139) | 19 Nov 06 |
| I loved this production,it is so funny and all of the cast were brilliant. Special praise should go to Yvette Robinson who's voice is amazing her blues number of "sign no more" was excellent. Jamie Ballard villiany kind of steals the show from Johnny Weir, who also does an excelent job. I loved the chemistry between the two lovers beatrice and benadict. If you can get tickets for it in London Go! It is worth it. - 86.53.56.139) | 19 Nov 06 |
| Sublime - easily the best Much Ado I've ever seen. Admittedly the Cuban angle leads nowhere, but it provides a marvellous visual and musical background. Many clever and original touches - I have never seen a Margaret distressed by her collusion in the shaming of Hero, but it works perfectly. This is a brilliant production, much better than than Greg Doran's over-rated version of a few years ago. - 84.68.20.200) | 04 Sep 06 |
| Fantastic production, will leave you dancing from the theatre! - 81.129.231.212) | 02 Jul 06 |
| The setting of Much Ado in Cuba circa 1953 certainly adds a strong design and music component to the production, although in truth it adds little to the play in way of exploration or enlightenment - and as such is very much a "director's concept", albeit an entertaining and enjoyable one. Much Ado depends on the two leads having chemistry and strong comic timing - Tamsin Greig's comic timing is well proven, but so too is, for me the star of the show, Joseph Millson's who has previously demonstrated superb comic acting in the Spanish Golden Age series at the RSC. These two excellent leads are well supported by Patrick Robinson, Nicholas Day, Adam Rayner and Morven Christie. Strongly recommended. - 62.255.32.15) | 30 Jun 06 |
| Marianne Elliott's production of Much Ado About Nothing is a delight from start to finish. Her chosen setting for the piece is Cuba (circa 1953) and between Lez Brotherston's dazzling design (which included, amongst other things, neon signs, lights strung along the galleries and across the stage and wrought iron balconies) and Olly Fox's superb Latin American score we felt we might really have been in the night club in which some of the action took place, so completely was the Swan Theatre transformed. The chosen setting provided a suitable military background, the opportunity for some vibrant dance routines and even an explanation of where Don John was going when he ultimately fled the city – to join the revolution, of course! He did not, as he stood silently on the stage and raised a rifle in the air, shout "Power to the people" but we would not have been surprised if he had! Another perhaps unexpected felicity of this production was Bette Bourne's portrayal of Dogberry. It was, unsurprisingly, camp in conception but was delivered in a manner that, whilst understated, added poignancy to the character and made his humour seem drier and more convincing. Dogberry was supported, too, by a very funny Verges (Stephen Beards) who, dressed in shorts and a floral shirt, scuttled round the stage after his "partner" and had an endearing manner that was both coy and confiding. The production did not neglect the play's darker side – indeed it emphasised it, if anything. Jonny Weir's Don John was suitably malconted and malevolent and the episode in which Claudio rejected Hero was devastating. Morven Christie's Hero was so distressed that she might well have died on the spot and Adam Rayner's Claudio so bitter and angry that it was no wonder that Hero later hesitated before forgiving him, seeming about to strike him but changing the gesture to one of affection at the last moment by putting her arm round his neck. The episode left Nicholas Day's Leonato almost distracted between grief and rage, and even caused the normally self-composed Beatrice to collapse to the stage in tears. And it was perhaps this sight which finally won her Benedick's heart. Sometimes we feel that the character has known about his feelings for Beatrice all along, but here Joseph Millson made us believe that he had at first only decided to marry her because he believed she loved him, which made his eventual realisation that he was indeed in love himself not only all the happier but also much more moving. Whether the heart of Tamsin Greig's Beatrice had always been as completely disengaged as she pretended was less certain – though we suspected it had not – but that she too had completely succumbed was evident when, as Benedick was stopping her mouth with a kiss, she waved an impatient hand at Duke Pedro to stop him from interrupting! A better matched – and more excellently performed – Beatrice and Benedick than this pair you could never hope to see! - 194.75.129.200) | 25 May 06 |
| A really fantastic RSC 'Much Ado'! Joseph Milsom and Tamsin Greig are surely as good a Beatrice and Benedick as we are ever likely to see. Beatrice has all the apparent quick-witted confidence which conceals a truly touching vulnerability. Joseph Milsom is a handsome confirmed-bachelor Benedick who cannot quite believe that he has succumbed to the beauty, liveliness, wit and sheer sexyness of Beatrice. The cast is without a weak link from the stately and poignant Don Pedro to the sinister Che Guevara look-alike Don John. The comedy is superb and so are the tragic overtones where women are passed like parcels from father to husband. The direction is deft, detailed and sure - it's staged brilliantly in a decadent and sassy 1950s cigar-smoking Cuba. A stroke of genius where Don Pedro's soldiers return from putting down a 1953 student rebellion.A breathtaking production not to be missed. - 80.189.236.238) | 24 May 06 |
| Wish the RSC would stop trying to turn every comedy into a musical,especially as generally the dancing is pretty banal and overlong.Great fan of both lead actors but wished they had been directed to play it as a comedy rather than broad farce.Still she got "Kill,Claudio!" right and Dogberry was one of the best Shakespeare clown performances I have ever seen...hardly Cuban tho was he??? - 88.108.63.130) | 23 May 06 |
