Review Much Ado About Nothing (Preview)

Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare

Once Upon A Time In Mexico
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/

It's Mucho Ado About Nothing with sombreros, ponchos and cigarillos at Shakespeare's Globe set in the midst of the Mexican Revolution in the early years of the 20th century.

The steam clears revealing wooden slatted railway wagons spanning the stage, a  means of moving people and supplies from and to the home encampment.  

The grubby rebels, the leader Don Pedro (Steve John Shepherd),  lanky, moustachioed Benedick (Matthew Needham) and young puppy rebel Claudio (Marcello Cruz) arrive on horses, cleverly evoked by riders on stilts and wire horses' heads.

Here the women stride around with rifles and belts of bullets criss crossing their female apparel. 

In the chauvinist rebel camp environment, there is also Don Pedro's sister, the saturnine Juana (Jo Dockery). It's a gender swap from the original Shakespeare text and the male machismo surrounding her gives some motivation for her bitterness and jealousy.

Directed by Matthew Dunster, it all works surprisingly well. Don Pedro is a slightly insecure Pancho Villa figure at a time when several factions were fighting for dominance in Mexico. The tough Leonato (Martin Marquez in a fine performance), complete with  black eye patch, is still slightly vulnerable when it comes to family honour.

Beatrice (Beatriz Romilly) is his slightly older niece, a slightly more careworn woman than her hardy but still more than slightly fragile cousin Hero (Anya Chalotra).

The music from composer James Maloney and the three-strong band led by Zands Duggan with Matt Bacon on guitar and Miguel Gorodi on trumpet, conjures up a hot, dusty and vibrant Mexico. But it also works dramatically, signalling the mood of the oncoming action and enabling fluid, clear scene changes for the audience.

Anna Fleischle's design keeps it simple: The train wagons from the National Railways of Mexico  provide the backdrop. On one side stands a blue and white tiled pillar with an altar and a Madonna shrine. On the other side, a pillar has a wooden bench curving round as a seat and a perch for the beer bottles.

Away from the main stage is another island platform in the midde of the groundlings, serving as a second stage. 

The tricks played on Beatrice and Benedict make sense in the boredom of the anti-climactic periods between fighting.  The easily-swayed males and their vulnerability, alongside machismo, makes sense of the savage rejection of Hero, not only by Claudio but also Don Pedro and her own father Leonato. 

The place names are changed to suit Mexico. The currency of course is the peso and the masked ball with Fleischle's flamboyant brightly colouried Mexican costumes  becomes a lusty but formalised celebration of the bull and virility. 

In this version, Dogberry becomes Dog Berry (Ewan Wardrop), an American movie director who mangles words in translation. 

His box camera footage helps uncover the villain of the piece and if the storyline feels a little strained, that's more the nature of Shakespearean comedy than this production. 

For a Hollywood newsreel and movie director really did accompany Sancho Panza in real life and there was even a contract, if a little less spectacular and prescriptive than some implied.

It's an earthy, bright and gaudy Much Ado with the music effortlessly flagging up the comic and serious moments.  

Very much an ensemble piece from Beatrice and Benedick, through Don Pedro, Juana, Hero, Claudio and Hero, to the sweetly-singing child soldier (Lucy Brandon), it's a green light for a mucho enjoyable Much Ado About Nothing.  

Review A Midsummer Night's Dream PREVIEW

A Midsummer Night's Dream
by William Shakespeare

Monster Midsummer Mash Up 
http://www.shakespearesglobe.com/ 

A joyful beginning to Emma Rice's tenure at The Globe for a gender-crossing xx best exotic Marigold xx A Midsummer Night's Dream where TLT and her garlanded companion found themselves groundlings in a wonderland just outside of Hoxton.

The tone is set from the start as tambourine-shaking parishioner Rita Quince (bespectacled Lucy Thackeray), in Globe volunteer uniform, clambers on the stage from white-tableclothed restaurant tables, introducing Nick Bottom (Ewan Wardrop) Health & Safety Officer.

Up above is the sitar-playing Sheema Mukherjee perched on a balcony and this parish has obviously now gone global in search of funding as is the wont of parishes nowadays ...   

*Flashback Alert!* 

We must confess to loving AMND (as we will shorten it from now on) since having our first magical experience at Regent's Park Open Air Theatre. Not without it's Indian tinge too, since one of the co-directors was Kashmir-born David Conville (along with Richard Digby-Day, a partnership still it seems going strong, and Christopher Biggins!)  But at the time we were chiefly excited by seeing pre-Big Brother, post Rock Follies Rula Lenska as Titania and Liver Bird Elizabeth Estensen as beanpole Helena. 

Anyway fast forward to the present!  

*End of Flashback Alert!*  

It's a hybrid AMND (hold on to that acronym!), a trifle self-conscious but none the worse for that. A cross between Bollywood, 1960s' Performance (without the gore), Sgt Pepper, Ugly Betty, trademark Kneehigh puppetry and aerial  flourishes (although also playful gestures to Peter Brook's legendary "Empty Space" AMND with Alan Howard and Sara Kestelman) 

Fresh from the "blow up sex doll" Measure for Measure (doncha just love the TLT blog archive, just to be able to say and link to that?! Put that in your pipe and smoke it, broadsheets!;)), Zubin Varla is a middle-aged Indian Mick-Jagger-type (parentheses and acronym alert, wait a moment Mick Jagger is now an OAP!) gangster cum restaurateur cum Duke Theseus.

He has captured the initially Scottish Hippolyta (Meow Meow clad in leopard skin slinky dress and coat) from a rival although she, by the end of the play, having brought her stilletos to the conference table, changes nationality.

A Glasto Indian sixth-former Hermia (AnjanaVasan) and an indy Brit wannabe Kerouac cum Brando cum Calvin Klein pecs' Lysander (Edmund Derrington) plan to elope. While a Brooks Brothers' (we really should get sponsorship for this!) ambitious smoothie Demetrius (Ncuti Gatwa), rather sinister in setting his sights on Hermia, is pursued by his old flame (and first aider - don't ask, go see!) Helenus (no. it's not a spelling error, it's Ankur Bahl!).

Bottom is the male cock of the walk surrounded by lady volunteers (*Minor Quibble Alert* he could insure he has a few all-eventualities' put-downs for good-natured heckles when he poses rhetorial questions to the audience!). 

And they are a comely bunch of variously talented am dram menials from Bottom's vainglorious would-be Olivier, via Snout's (Alex Tregear) ingeniously "wittiest partition" cereal packet wall to the rather proficient Thisbe/Flute (a hard call to make clear an amateur is really rather good but Margaret Ann Bain pulls it off). 

But wait - we can't forget the faerie world and mischieviously Puckish (surely a tautology?!) Puck (Katy Owen) - part Pinocchio, part Tinker Bell - who also transforms herself into stern father in a wheelchair Egeus cum gangsta ?music producer with Sophia Loren sunglasses. 

Voodoo zombie fairies (Nandi Bhebhe, also Metro-reading Starveling) and Cobweb (Tibu Fortes), amongst others, do Oberon and Titania's bidding with Varla and Meow as is usual doubling up the royal roles. 

We're past the time of phrases such as "unashamedly populist" (why should it be anything else?). There have been enough updatings and adaptations of Shakespeare to make even a Globe in-joke about "fidelity to text" a wee bit dépassé when it's now broadcast in your own series or be damned in the groves of academe. But it's all none the worse for that. 

Maybe Bottom's transformation into an ass scene - seen by your Pen and Tell twosome in broad daylight - could have been more magical but, again, that's a minor quibble (we've had enough of alerts - once used they're no longer a novelty!). 

A great bubble of laughter and little toots of pleasure from TLT's sidekick engulfed The Globe (with even a bit of Bowie and was that a touch of cod Sondheim?!) in this first production of a new regime. Tanika Gupta's lyrics  and dramaturgy including a smidgeon of John Donne acknowledging the new Globe's American origins and Stu Barker's music prove charming crowd pleasers. 

So we take away a green light served up by The Globe's "wedding special" menu and wish the happy coupling well!