Much Ado About Nothing review

Joyous, unashamedly silly and shot through with real tenderness, Jamie Lloyd’s refreshingly irreverent version of Shakespeare’s story of bickering lovers feels like a confident return to form. The production follows on from a muddled take on The Tempest starring Sigourney Weaver, which ran on the same stage last year.

Lloyd deploys many of the same techniques here – the severe aesthetic choices, the lines delivered through reverberatingly loud microphones, and big-name casting in stars Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston. But now, all of that stylised pop sensibility serves the story, evoking a world of hedonistic frivolity, which crumbles away abruptly when the accusations of unfaithfulness start to fly.

Lloyd keeps a tight rein on the chaotic carousing, zeroing in on the two couples at the story’s heart, contrasting Hero and Claudio’s reckless passions against Beatrice and Benedick’s deeper, more gradually won connection. Shakespeare’s language is made breezy and lucid by a uniformly strong cast with an absolute grasp of the piece’s poetry and humour. Every Elizabethan punchline lands, feeling fresh and genuinely funny.

Hiddleston makes a wonderfully wry Benedick, showing off some superb timing and a knack for energetic physical comedy. He takes evident pleasure in his verbal sparring with Beatrice, but never lets their banter feel vicious, mellowing their merry war with sly self-deprecation. After Hero’s public humiliation, Hiddleston’s manner switches, becoming serious and sombre, instantly ready to step up to defend love and honour. Atwell brings a harder edge to her Beatrice, all her disarming wordplay a defence mechanism. There are fleeting moments when she seems on the verge of tears, but deflects attention with a snarky remark. The pair share a rich chemistry, spiky and flirtatious, freighted with the emotional weight of their past entanglements.

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