Dr Peter Kirwan

Tag: Much Ado about Nothing

  • The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) (American Shakespeare Center) @ The Blackfriars Playhouse

    Every now and again, I’ve been lucky to see a revival of an existing play that makes that play feel freshly written, as if designed for that company and that moment. The reworking of Death of a Salesman for an African American family; Theatre Wallay’s reworking of The Taming of the Shrew as a commentary…

  • Much Ado about Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre Company) @ Sidney Harman Hall

    Much Ado about Nothing (Shakespeare Theatre Company) @ Sidney Harman Hall

    This review is of a preview performance. The conceit for Simon Godwin’s new Much Ado about Nothing for Shakespeare Theatre Company (his second of the year, after this summer’s production at the National in London) was ripped straight from the beloved 2005 Shakespeare Re-Told BBC adaptation. Like that film, this production was set in a…

  • Much Ado about Nothing @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Much Ado about Nothing @ Shakespeare’s Globe

    Much of the pleasure of productions of Much Ado about Nothing comes from their reliance on the Chekhov’s Gun principle. If a garden sprinkler gets reeled out onto the artificial grass next to the audience – as it did in Lucy Bailey’s new Globe production, just before Beatrice’s overhearing scene – one can enjoy the…

  • Much Ado About Nothing (RSC) via BBC iPlayer

    Much Ado About Nothing (RSC) via BBC iPlayer

    Roy Alexander Weise’s Much Ado about Nothing is a landmark RSC production in several respects. It’s the first full-scale main-stage production directed by a Black director at the RSC (in 2022!), and the first ‘repeat’ production to interrupt the RSC’s now eight-year project to stage the whole canon. The filmed version of the production also deviates from…

  • Much Ado About Nothing (Northern Broadsides) @ Derby Theatre

    Much Ado About Nothing (Northern Broadsides) @ Derby Theatre

    Conrad Nelson’s swansong production for Northern Broadsides offered a paeon to rural England in its mise-en-scene. A huge cyclorama showed sprawling green fields; sheep baa-ed in the distance and birds tweeted. Lis Evans’s set located the production at the close of World War II, with ‘Dig for Victory!’ posters lining flats at the side of the stage, and…

  • Love’s Labour’s Won [Much Ado About Nothing] (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, via RSC Live

    Love’s Labour’s Won [Much Ado About Nothing] (RSC) @ The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, via RSC Live

    Where Christopher Luscombe’s Love’s Labour’s Lost was a pleasant surprise, its self-parodic wit trumping the pull towards nostalgia and self-indulgence that the period setting might have implied, Love’s Labour’s Won had the opposite effect on me. Here, a series of uncomfortable decisions underwritten by unpleasant assumptions marred a production that had a great deal of potential (particularly in two wonderful…

  • Much Ado about Nothing (film)

    Much Ado about Nothing (film)

    Joss Whedon introduced a special advance preview screening of his new movie of Much Ado about Nothing last night (alas, via pre-recorded video) with a tribute to the teachers and professors who had instilled him with a love of Shakespeare. In allowing the Shakespeare Association of America annual conference in Toronto to get an early whiff of this…

  • Much Ado about Nothing (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre

    Much Ado about Nothing (RSC) @ The Courtyard Theatre

    If the RSC’s recent production of Julius Caesar was the company’s attempt to “do” a version of Africa with an all-Black British cast, then Iqbal Khan’s new production of Much Ado About Nothing attempts to do the same for India. Both offer problems to my mind in terms of their relation to the rest of the world. Whereas the Globe has…

  • Much Ado about Nothing (Demi-Paradise Productions) @ Lancaster Castle

    Location can be a blessing or a curse for a production. Site-specific theatre is one thing, where the play is written or adapted specifically for the area in which it will be realised; but Shakespeare transplanted into grand locations can run the risk of not mapping consistently onto its surroundings, or of the scenery overwhelming…

  • Much Ado about Nothing (Mappa Mundi/Theatr Mwldan) @ Lakeside Arts Centre

    Much Ado about Nothing (Mappa Mundi/Theatr Mwldan) @ Lakeside Arts Centre

    Expectations were set high by Welsh company Mappa Mundi’s self-description of its work: “gloriously irreverent, populist and accessible.” A fun-loving Much Ado is always to be welcomed, and the setting – Britain between the wars, a culture where women have been taking on traditional men’s roles – offered an interesting take on the traditional war between the sexes. In…