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Sean Campion as Benedick |
Messina’s garden of laughter
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
Regent's Park Open Air Theatre
THERE is a moment in Timothy Sheader’s handsome outdoor telling of Much Ado when the imbecilic constable Dogberry, rebuking a knave for disrespect, produces a Freedom Pass to prove his seniority.
It’s a small touch, a brief flash of tartrazine orange against a period tunic, but it speaks volumes for the character of this production, the first of the summer season at Regent’s Park. Laughter is the highest law of this Messina, and modernity – or at least a modern slant on morality – never feels far away.
The onus for this lies partly with Shakespeare’s play. Beatrice, given lashings of spirit by Samantha Spiro, has a tongue to knock Sarah Jessica Parker out of her Jimmy Choos; no man can withstand her acerbic wit.
One with the effrontery to try is Benedick (Sean Campion), a soldier and wag in the service of Don Pedro, whose company arrives in Messina at the start of the drama.
Beatrice and Benedick are locked in a “merry war”, a skirmish of wits undone only when their peers conspire to make them fall in love with one another. In a series of brilliantly staged pieces, these two confirmed individualists eavesdrop on gossip about the other’s infatuation, using the citrus trees of the governor Leonato’s garden for cover.
It is hilarious – Campion has undoubtedly mastered the look of chinless disbelief – but it is also only one half of the story. The second plotline, concerning the courtship and subsequent defamation of Leonato’s only daughter, Hero, by the young stud Claudio, is a drier affair.
It seems Sheader thinks so too, for the scenes between the young lovebirds do not possess the same pathos and invention. It is harder to wring out, perhaps, but you sense that the director’s heart lies with the quips and scuttlebutt.
This, ultimately, is what makes this Much Ado feel so contemporary. Not the occasional plane overhead or the supporting cast’s gelled hair, but that narrow definition of comedy as a vehicle for making people laugh.
Isn’t comedy also a form of resistance, or a means of reconciliation with the cruelties of existence? Shakespeare’s comedies certainly possess both strains.
In this garden of Messina, however, you will only find the funny side.
A lovely summer play, then, if not quite a whole one.
Until June 27
0844 826 4242
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