Theatre Review: This amusing Much Ado About Nothing more than lives up to its name

It isn’t really done to admit not every one of Shakespeare’s plays are works of unqualified genius, but I’ve always got the impression this was one the old boy knocked off in a bit of a hurry just to keep him in ale. An awful lot,
therefore, depends on what a director chooses to make of it, and, happily,
Simon Godwin has gone all out to charm audiences, and, so far as his budget is concerned, money would appear to have been no object.

Dario Rossetti-Bonell as music director gets the punters into the mood with a swing band and a jazzy soundtrack, Coral Messam oversees some exhilarating dance routines, and Evie Gurney’s costume designs are almost up there with Cecil Beaton’s.

A few military uniforms vaguely suggest Mussolini might be in power as the action unfolds, but Godwin has rightly not troubled too much to locate the production in space or time. It can get awfully laboured when a director gets it into his or her head to make out Shakespeare had a strong view about something that happened long after his bones had turned to dust.

To the extent there is a plot it focuses on the romances of a group of soldiers who show up in town. Claudio (Eben Figueiredo) falls for Hero (Ioanna Kimbook) and Claudio’s mate Benedick (John Heffernan) goes for Hero’s cousin Beatrice (Katherine Parkinson).

There are all sorts of complications and a wedding that has to be called off,
and, while it’s all good-natured and immaculately played out, there is not a
single scene in it that is laugh-out-loud funny. It’s as if Bob Monkhouse had
written the script rather than Shakespeare: it’s all terribly safe, inoffensive and Middle England.

Of the strong cast, Figueiredo – so good playing opposite James McAvoy in Cyrano de Bergerac – predictably dominates the proceedings with a combination of technically extremely accomplished acting, a natural gift for
comedy and huge reserves of charisma. He is clearly passionately in love with Hero and the jealously in his eyes and demeanour when he realises he’s not the only one who has eyes for her is powerfully communicated. In his scenes with Kimbook, the sexual energy between them is palpable.

Parkinson and Heffernan elect to play Beatrice and Benedick as respectively a kind of roaring twenties Hollywood starlet and a gawky loner that makes for an amusing contrast between the two but doesn’t really work as a convincing relationship. They are both perfectly entertaining, but never, for one moment, did I detect any chemistry at all between them.

Top marks, however, to David Fynn’s Dogberry, the hotel’s superbly dim-witted head of security, who plays the part as a cross between Basil Fawlty and David Brent, but who is nevertheless a useful plot device who manages to unravel a lot of the chicanery that’s going on around him.

There are meanwhile some amusing comedy routines, such as when Heffernan’s Benedick hides in a hotel ice cream trolley as other characters
obliviously take their scoops and sprinkle their toppings and he eventually emerges covered in cream and coatings.

This production and the sadly a lot less entertaining Jack Absolute Flies Again playing concurrently make it obvious that the National has decided this is to be a long hot summer of mirth and frolics rather than any serious thinking. I don’t want to be a killjoy, but I am not entirely sure if that entirely captures the national mood and I hope before too long this of all theatres makes a serious attempt at addressing what is now happening in the world around us. It’s been a very long time since the National has put on a production that is brave and speaks to our times rather than that seeks merely to anaesthetise us to them.

Still, on its own terms, Much Ado About Nothing works. I’d recommend
having a few glasses of rosé before taking your seat and not taking along
anyone too earnest. It is an amusing enough divertissement that more than
lives up to its name.