11 March 2025
This is without any shadow of doubt doubt the best, most fun Shakespeare production London has seen in many, many years.
Delivering an evening that explodes with fun at every possible opportunity, maverick director Jamie Lloyd wipes the slate completely clean on his recent disappointing monochrome The Tempest led by an out-of-her-depth Sigourney Weaver as Prospoero at the same venue.
The West End’s oldest theatre, the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, magnificent in her Georgian finery after a £50million renovation, has seen nothing quite like it. And quite what Sir John Gielgud – the last actor to have trod the boards in Shakespeare at the venue – would make of the shenanigans can only be guessed.
The place has been transformed into a massive night club – with vivid, dazzling disco lights a gogo and even the biggest club anthems piped into the men’s urinals in the interval. The aesthetic is 90s clubland with the fun starting as soon as you enter the auditorium, where you are blinded by a blizzard of pink lights searching the audience to the sound of Black Box’s Ride On Time and other pumping, uplifting club tunes.
The play’s title Much Ado About Nothing means a huge fuss about not very much. But the word ‘nothing’ had other meanings in Shakespeare’s time. It was probably pronounced ‘noting’, and ‘noting’ could also mean ‘eavedropping’ – something that happens an awful lot throughout the play.
Central to this comedy of sparring lovers is the relationship between returning soldier Benedict and Beatrice. They bitch and moan and tell anyone who can listen that they don’t actually like each other, loathing would be more exact. But all the while we know that they are completely suited – and will get it together before too long. That they are played by real life friends and fellow stars of the celluloid Marvel universe, Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell only adds to the fun. He is a great Shakespearian actor – who can forget his Coriolanus at the Donmar? – but together they prove a dream team.
Nothing quite prepares you for the moments when Mr Hiddleston twerks, dad dances or decides to woo Beatrice by calmy unbuttoning his silk shirt then ripping it open to proudly expose his ripped deeply pitted abdominals. The audience at that point as one collectively lost it! 🔥 And there are many other wonderful moments of slastick and physical comedy that I hope audiences get to experience first hand without reading about them first.
Mr Lloyd has been ruthless with the scissors – gone is the comic subplot involving Dogberry the bumbling constable (no great loss) and the production fairly canters along. Most of the cast of The Tempest are again on parade, but herev visibily having the time of their lives. Mason Alexander Park’s throaty disco singing ads greatly to the party atmosphere.
The sound of Urban Cookie Collective’s “The Key: The Secret” in the men’s toilets in the interval took me straight back to The Fridge in Brixton where I saw the group in 1993 at either Ciao Baby or Love Muscle, and i practically levitated back to my seat for act 2.
Let’s be clear, this ridiculous, ecstatic, hilarious production is Shakespeare that will appeal to the masses in the 21st century. It is Shakespeare for youngsters and the young at heart, relevant, urgent, clear and so, so enjoyable. The last time I left a theatre floating two feet off the ground on a wave of pure euphoria was Mr Lloyd’s revisionist Sunset Blvd. This is that good. No even better.
