Like most Shakespeare comedies, Much Ado About Nothing is often performed as a garden party fantasy of Merrie England – so it’s a treat to see two major productions both committed to restoring the Mediterranean flavour of this hot-blooded piece, which Shakespeare actually set not in Stratford, but Sicily.
At the Globe, Jeremy Herrin strews the stage with oranges and Moorish lattice work. Amidst the almost Pagan street festival, this really is a place where a sun-addled youth might blindly search for a metaphor to describe his unfaithful lover and find it to hand in ‘a rotten orange’.
Meanwhile, across the river at Wyndhams theatre, Josie Rourke sets her rival production in 1980s Gibraltar (Although, when Don Pedro’s soldiers march in victorious from the Falkland islands, you’d be forgiven for taking their aviator glasses and car salesman navy uniforms as evidence we’re in Miami with Baz Lurhmann.)
It’s a smart move that makes sense of both the exuberance and melodrama of Shakespeare’s play: by night, Beatrice and Hero wear Thatcher masks and rave it up to the strains of Wham! but by day they don black lace mantillas for sombre mafia-style funerals.
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