Much Ado about something very special

Kill, steal, lie, cheat, sell your body (er, no, not you 'NIB'), or do whatever it takes to get a ticket for Much Ado About Nothing at the National directed by Nicholas Hytner with Simon Russell Beale and Zoe Wanamaker.  After three theatrical duds in a row I felt that I really did deserve a winner and this production is simply terrific.  The only complaint I have is that it made me feel like giving up my amateur efforts because if I tried for a month of Sundays I could never produce something as excellent as that. 

To me, the story of Beatrice and Benedick is the best love story that Shakespeare ever told.  It is what I call a love story about grown-ups and for grown-ups, and they don't come much more grown-up than Beale and Wanamaker!  But what a deep satisfaction and contentment there is to be had from watching two, shall we say, mature but highly intelligent actors delivering a Shakespearean text.  Every meaning, and double meaning, pointed up with the lightest of touches.  They both have that invaluable ability to indicate to an audience that they are thinking the thought before they speak it, rather than merely reciting the words. (That ability was what made Beale's Hamlet, the 'thinking' prince, the very best I have ever seen.)  By coincidence, the previous day I had seen a retrospective TV programme on the late Morcombe and Wise and I couldn't help thinking that those two geniuses of comic timing would have much admired the way Beale and Wanamaker worked off each other to such terrific comic effect.  Not that they were alone.  There was not a weak link in the entire company.  In particular, Susannah Fielding as Hero, and who only left drama school last January, impressed me with not just her performance but the strength of her young voice; that old Shakespearean warhorse, Oliver Ford Davies as Leonato, was immensely moving on the news of his daughter's apparent disgrace; Mark Addy, a new face and name to me, was a change from the normally ponderous, pompous Dogberry, in that he delivered his famous malapropisms with energy but with the usual sublime ignorance of his own stupidity; finally, Andrew Woodall gave an unusually slow-speaking Don John which added mightily to his menace.  The set, which made full use of its immense revolve, was superb and contained within itself a brilliant coup de theatre which I will not divulge lest I spoil your surprise.  Suffice to say that it had the entire audience of the Olivier Theatre rocking with laughter.

Not, under any circumstances, to be missed!

Comments

[dearieme]

How would you compare it with Branagh's film version?

[David Duff]

Infinitely better, although I like Branagh's film very much. It was spoilt, I think, by Keanu Reeves's 'Don John'. When I die, Reeves will be the world's worst actor. Neither did I care very much for Michael Keaton's 'Dogberry'. Even so, Branagh and his 'missus' (of the time) were excellent and the setting, the music and the dancing really provided the right mood. I have always rated Branagh much more highly as a light comedian than a tragedian. However, this stage version is of a very different order of excellence. Beale and Wanamaker, and all of the others, wring every nuance from the text, but do it effortlessly - artlessly. Do try and and see it.