Much Ado About Nothing at the Watermill Theatre – review

Prepare to be transported to the glamour of 1940s Hollywood where, just as The Taming of the Shrew is transformed into Kiss Me, Kate, this Much Ado About Nothing is laden with vintage tunes. The inspired conceit here is that we the audience are joining cast and crew on a movie set.

The cameras zoom across designer Ceci Calf’s cleverly multi-purpose set which switches from a library and an orchard to a church and a stately home as the fast-moving action requires, with a background of woods and hills beyond. Strategically arranged almost in the wings is a variety of musical instruments played by members of the 11-strong cast of wonderfully talented and versatile actor-musicians. The music is drawn from the glorious Hollywood and Broadway gems of the 30s, 40s and 50s including “When I Fall in Love”, “It Had To Be You”, “Body and Soul” and “Papa Loves Mambo”.

Director Paul Hart and adaptor Tom Wentworth have gone for strong reassignment of gender from male to female, from Augustine Seymour’s striking raven-haired villainess Don John to Emma Barclay and Leigh Quinn, gleefully juggling the roles of Verges (the dim member of Don Pedro’s watch), Conrade (Don John’s accomplice), and the Friar. The latter is booked to marry Claudio the young soldier home from the wars to Hero, daughter of the noble Leonato, Governor of Messina, who is welcoming the high-ranking, returning officers with his generous hospitality.

The troops are led by the victorious Don Pedro (played by a compelling Jack Quarton), who enjoys the strategies of making love matches as much as leading his men into battle.

His second in command is James Mack’s appealingly bouncy Benedick, at first sight perhaps not an obvious match for Katherine Jack’s shiningly intelligent Beatrice. Shakespeare and the entire company here conspire and cooperate to bring these two apparently unlikely lovers together. There’s a delicious running joke that Benedick is attempting songwriting and seeking a rhyme for lady. The best he can do is ‘baby’. Ironically, Mack’s surname rhymes with Jack’s; my guess is Shakespeare would have been well-pleased.

Clearly a woman used to being in charge of her emotions, Jack’s Beatrice finds her cool successfully ruffled by the plotting of her cousin Hero and her resourceful and faithful waiting gentlewoman (Priscille Grace, whose stunning singing voice tugs at the heartstrings). There is truly, madly, deeply idiosyncratic comedy in Beatrice’s realisation that she is not immune to falling in love, which has her posing as an apple tree, complete with an apple in each hand, in an attempt to eavesdrop on those scheming to bring her together with Benedick.

Fred Double, a recent graduate from Mountview Academy of Performing Arts, brings an appealing romantic ardour to the role of Claudio, Benedick’s young comrade in arms. He falls head over heels in love with Hero, a fervour nicely tempered by his eye for the main chance of marrying into money and status – apparently a win-win situation. However, he later falls for the traps of the conniving Don John and cruelly rejects Hero at the altar, suggesting to me at least that Shakespeare sees past his outward chivalry to some misogyny that Hero will need to manage. Hero herself, as vividly played by Thuliswa Magwaza, is defiantly feisty and likely to prove more than a match for Claudio, as she enters enthusiastically into the Friar’s scheme that she is pronounced dead.

Hart’s production manages every nuance of the action, from high drama to hilariously improbable comedy. And while we are on the subject of wild comedy, the marvellous Hayden Wood, who could be described as statuesque, though he is seldom still, has the audience crying with laughter as his Dogberry, the constable heading up Leonato’s watch, comes out with deliciously inappropriate malapropisms (e.g. “comparisons are odorous”) and recruits audience members to watch out for him and come out with – er – watchwords. Looking it up I discovered that an earlier word for malapropism as used by Sheridan in The Rivals, with its comical character Mrs Malaprop, is actually ‘Dogberryism’!

Every conceit and confection contributes to a glorious theatrical whole. I think film, musical and Shakespeare fans would flock to the cinema to see this Much Ado. Meanwhile, catch it if you can onstage at the Watermill.