MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING at the Duke of York’s Theatre
★★★★
“it is the high exuberance of everyone that comes through the strongest”
The National Youth Theatre REP Company celebrates its 10th anniversary with a joyous romp through Shakespeare’s couples comedy in one of the West End’s most prestigious theatres.
Reinterpreting the text for a youthful cast and audience, in a version not ‘adapted’ according to the programme but ‘remixed’ by Debris Stevenson, the setting becomes Nowhere Island, a reality TV dating show. We get to see the players both on and off camera, on set and behind the scenes and, most engagingly, how the characters are manipulated and controlled by the TV show’s creators. There is, as appears to be the norm nowadays, a lot of additional non-Shakespearean text, including a plasma screen that rolls ‘live audience’ social media comments, but this should not upset the purist. This is a well thought through concept – ninety minutes, no interval – and it works.
Josie Daxter directs a sixteen-strong ensemble around a revolving set (Designer Zoë Hurwitz) which we witness being de-constructed at the end of the show to reveal the bare walls of the space behind. The large number of people on stage sometimes looks cluttered and their movements clumsy, but it is the high exuberance of everyone that comes through the strongest.
With a sassy rendition of Sigh No More Ladies to start things off as a theme tune to the TV show, we hear the players humming Hey Nonny Nonny even when not on camera, an earworm that they can’t shake off. This is an ensemble of good-lookers with pecs and midriffs on show. The girls pose and pout. The boys show off with testosterone-imbued hip-thrusting movements. Subtle, it ain’t. But in contrast, any personal insights into a character’s feelings are admitted privately in front of a screen in the ‘diary room’. Genius.
In Much Ado we have to rely on a strong Beatrice and Benedick and in Isolde Fenton and Daniel Cawley we are in good hands. It is an inauspicious start, however, with the early repartee between them performed in rap but things can only get better and they do. Fenton soon shines, her confident performance leading into an especially passionate display of Beatrice’s ‘O were I a man’ speech whilst Cawley’s cheeky chappie approach to Benedick is endearing and loveable.
Despite the radical re-creation of much of the play, this young cast exhibits a good feeling for the poetry – something that another large house was unable to achieve in a recent production. Hannah Zoé Ankrah as Friar, as well as Fenton and Cawley, are particularly strong in this regard.
Other special mentions go to Jessica Enemokwu as Leonato – the TV show producer – who is in full control of proceedings (ditch the megaphone though); Tomás Azócar-Nevin as Conrade, understated but just right; and Jasmine Ricketts as Don John who, after all is done, returns alone to a bare stage and exhibits a brave postlude breakdown that hints at her character’s mental illness. Finally, for one of the bravest and raunchiest staged love scenes between Borachio (Dalumuzi Moyo) and Margaret (Nathaly Sabino) I have seen – Bravo.
“a workable and reasonably successful ensemble production”
This production from Lazarus Theatre Company reduces Shakespeare’s longest play to a concise one hundred minutes, performed without an interval, by axing all the adult characters. No Claudius, no Gertrude, no Polonius…
The work was initially created as part of an actor in training programme, and the production fails to escape these origins. It still looks and feels like an actor’s workshop rather than a finished piece of theatre. Part of this is deliberate: the setting is an unspecified young person’s space: part drama studio, part therapy group, part corrective training establishment.
The theatre space (Designer Sorcha Corcoran) is stripped back to its black walls exposing the lighting bars, the floor is scuffed with just some fresh blue lines marking zonal space providing some colour. A circle of blue plastic chairs and two props cabinets are the only set. The lighting (Designer Stuart Glover) is often blue too giving some ambience, whilst brighter light from the side bars causes shadowing issues.
An ensemble of nine actors is summoned into the circle by the ringing of a bell. Everyone is dressed in blue sweatshirts, tracksuit bottoms and training shoes. Each is invited to tell their story by an unknown amplified voice (Micha Colombo). This is the method by which Shakespeare’s plot is moved forward; at key moments the voice informs the young people of activities by the missing adults, or of offstage action not seen (“Hamlet has killed Polonius”). The amplified voice becomes an unseen presence with characters looking fearfully upwards, knowing that everything they do is observed. Is this voice then a helpful counsellor or Big Brother?
Central to almost every scene, Hamlet (Michael Hawkey) dominates the action. The remaining ensemble is pushed to the cramped sidelines, slightly but not completely out of the light. Hawkey grows into his role as the play progresses, but the need for speed often impairs the clarity of his diction. Noise from the wind machine and electronic sound effects mask the spoken word in the appearance of old Hamlet’s ghost – although Horatio (Alex Zur) boasts some fine vocal quality – and the occasional use of a handheld microphone with its inherent pops and bangs jars, particularly in Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy. The effectiveness of choral speaking during the Ghost scene is also marred by the amplified sound.
Director Ricky Dukes keeps the actors primarily at a distance as if intimacy between them is not permissible. Hamlet interrogates Rosencrantz (Amber Mendez-Martin) and Guildenstern (Raj Swamy) from the full width of the stage, and again when Hamlet berates Ophelia (Lexine Lee) with “Get thee to a nunnery”. Lee plays her role in an effectively calm manner. When she leaves the stage pursued by a handheld camera, TV screens show her movement through the backstage corridors to her untimely and bloody end in a toilet cubicle.
A comic Players’ scene (Kiera Murray and Juan Hernandez) is nicely done and Kalifa Taylor shines in her lone dramatic rendition. Laertes (Sam Morris) lacks sufficient anger on hearing of Ophelia’s fate but a slowmo sword fight (Fight Direction Alice Emery) between him and Hamlet provides an effective way of staging the final scene.
What is achieved then in this radical rethink of how to present Hamlet is a series of vignettes held together by the framing device of the Voice. This cast, the majority of whom are appearing in their first professional production, all require a little more polish and the production is rather rough around the edges. Considering the loss of so many key roles, though, Lazarus has produced, perhaps surprisingly, a workable and reasonably successful ensemble production.
