Shakespeare Party!
“I do love nothing in the world so well as you: is not that strange?”
Benedick
Director Jamie Lloyd makes a positive impression with the second play Much Ado About Nothing in the Drury Lane Shakespeare Season. It is a party disco atmosphere before we start and when the cast arrive they are dancing to disco music and the audience goes wild for Tom Hiddleston playing Benedick. His celebrity is down to his film appearances but we know he can act Shakespeare from his Coriolanus at the Donmar in 2013.
Coming in at two hours ten minutes with the interval, this is considerably shorter than most productions of Much Ado. Also pared back is the modern dress costume, the minimalist set of non-descript chairs in a line but there is opulence in the amount of cherry blossom that falls from above throughout the play making a thick, pink blanket on the floor.
Much Ado is a love story between two older individuals Beatrice (Hayley Atwell) and Benedick (Tom Hiddleston) past youth and infatuation who engage in banter detesting each other. However, they are the object of a game, whereby their friends and colleagues set them up into believing that each is secretly in love with the other by eavesdropping on the conversations of others. It is amazing on hearing how well you are loved that the romance turns your heart towards reciprocity.
Mason Alexander Park as Margaret is given a more important part here than in the original, where her role as a servant is to inadvertently make Claudio (James Phoon) believe his bride to be Hero (Mara Huf) is unfaithful on the eve of her wedding. Margaret sings several songs using a microphone and singing is her strength. Margaret’s early presence confuses the early scenes between Beatrice and Benedick.
The masked ball uses animal heads totally disguising who is wearing them and they look very cute, like soft toys. There is amazing physical comedy during the dance scenes with very sexual hip thrusting and arm actions to match. Hiddleston’s dance moves get huge cheers and when he unbuttons his shirt to reveal his toned abs, the crowd go wild! He rolls around on the floor covered cherry blossom and delights his many fans.
I’m not sure that following all this gaiety that the great sorrow felt by Hero and her supporters when the bastard villain Don John (Tim Steed) railroads her wedding, lands well. I also didn’t like the bride’s minidress with white knee socks but there’s no accounting for fashion. Beatrice looks genuinely angry when Benedick refuses to kill Claudio.
We have to be grateful to Jamie Lloyd for bringing a young audience into a Shakespeare play but I am really not sure that this will convert those who have previously expressed a distaste for Shakespeare to seeing other plays by the Bard. I have enjoyed other more conventional Much Ados much more for the brilliant comedy as Beatrice and Benedick discover love for each other.
Editor of TheatreVibe.co.uk
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Production Notes
Much Ado About Nothing
Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Jamie Lloyd
Cast
Starring:
Tom Hiddleston
Hayley Atwell
Forbes Masson
James Phoon
Tim Steed
Phillip Olagoke
Mara Huf
Mason Alexander Park
Mika Onyx Johnson
Gerald Kyd
Creatives
Director: Jamie Lloyd
Designer: Soutra Gilmour
Sound Designers and Composer: Ben and Max Ringham
Lighting Designer: Jon Clark
Movement: Fabian Aloise
Fight Director: Kate Waters
Musical Director: Hugh Evans
Information
Running Time: Two hours 10 minutes including an interval
Booking to 5th April 2025
Theatre:
Theatre Royal Drury Lane
Catherine Street
London WC2B 5JF
Box Office: 020 7557 7300
Website: https://thejamielloydcompany.com/
Tube: Covent Garden
Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge
at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane at a preview performance
on 12th February 2025