Much Ado About Nothing
The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon
★★

THE problem with resetting Shakespeare’s plays into modern times is so often that the dramatist will get in the way.

Occasionally it can work splendidly, as with Rupert Goold’s recent RSC’s Hamlet, set onboard the Titanic, in which the dramatic tragedy is framed by the natural evolving real-life tragedy. However, Michael Longhurst’s new production of Much Ado About Nothing is a struggle with the Bard all the way.

Admittedly the universality of tragedy is more flexible than the more restricted world of comedy. Longhurst here has, to all intents and purposes, created a “new” play which captures the testosterone-charged energy of the contemporary football world. Our present sporting heroes, however, have their own language, as distinctive and different from Shakespeare’s as is conceivable.

The triumphant cup-winning Messina FC return to the home stadium where the lads and their WAGs get down to some serious junketing. It is all good fun, lots of adolescent pranks and playful insults until the one baddie decides to throw a spanner in the works.

When the manager’s self-acknowledged, plain-dealing villain of a brother, Don John, decides to frustrate the marriage of Claudio, the team’s young star player, to Hero, the daughter of the team owner, the plot thickens.

Meanwhile the team captain, Benedick, is engaged with Beatrice, Hero’s cousin (and a rather unlikely sports broadcaster) in a game of who can score the most in acid put downs.

The cast are spot on in conveying the youthful, knock-about, off-the-field camaraderie but much of the witty word play is lost.

Longhurst makes up for this with lots of slapstick comedy, particularly in the complementary gulling scenes. Here Frima Agyeman’s sparky Beatrice and Nick Blood’s good-time confirmed bachelor are easily tricked into recognising their true feelings for each other.

The second half is devoted largely to resolving the plot confusions through the clownish local security guards, the malapropic Dogberry and Nick Cavaliere’s Verges (“a good old man sir, he will be talking”). Here, given the weighting of high comedy to the main action, farce necessarily takes over.

All the same, Michael Longhurst offsets the difficulties of modernising Shakespeare with a production bursting with speed and energy. After all, it is much ado about nothing.

Runs until May 24. Box office: 01789 333-111, rsc.org.uk.