Much Ado About Nothing (Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London)
Anyone heading to Drury Lane expecting to see Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston in a traditional production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado must go back to their wardrobes.
My advice is to dust down those platform boots, dig out a spangly top and pull on a neon wig for, i’faith, this new version of the Bard’s rom-com is a big pink disco boogie.
Atwell and Hiddleston play Shakespeare’s famously warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick.
And in between the show’s kitsch, smoochy and jiving dance numbers, their verbal sparring becomes a sort of running battle rap, staged on a sea of pink ticker tape, which falls continuously throughout the two-and-a-quarter-hour performance.
It’s Shakespeare as we’ve never seen it before: with a giant inflatable pink heart floating at the rear of the stage like an enormous wobbly bottom.
Speaking of bottoms, Hiddleston – who famously bared his in TV smash The Night Manager – plays Benedick like a complacent public school boy.
Reprehensibly slick in his silk shirts and pleated strides (fixed with a glitter belt), he coasts along with one eye on his legion of fans in the audience.
They return his flirtatious twinkle with giggles and whoops when he shakes his booty (clothed this time) in a Bollywood-style, formation step dance. Atwell, in a bronze-lamé jumpsuit, is effortlessly scornful as Beatrice, mocking Benedick’s self-satisfaction. But she is also the first to launch into the play’s emotional stakes when her sweet cousin Hero is stood up at the altar.
Anyone heading to Drury Lane expecting to see Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston (pictured) in a traditional production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado must go back to their wardrobes
Atwell and Hiddleston play Shakespeare’s famously warring lovers Beatrice and Benedick
The adaptation has a number of kitsch, smoochy and jiving dance numbers
There’s always been more to her than a Mission Impossible action woman, surviving train wrecks on collapsing bridges alongside Tom Cruise.
And when she turns – sneering at Hiddleston’s manhood ‘melting into courtesies’ – she really lets rip.
The chemistry between them is like a kilo of sodium dumped in the village pond: fizzy, flashing and explosive.
The highlight of Jamie Lloyd’s high-spirited production, though, is when they are tricked into falling in love, after overhearing friends’ (fake) gossip. Hiddleston tries to hide in a hillock of that pink ticker tape, before pulling off a brilliant vanishing trick. Atwell is more conventionally duped with words.
Both are good sports – but allowing themselves to be sent up with cardboard cutouts of themselves from the Marvel Comic Universe (her as Peggy Carter, him as Loki) is a bit too worshipful.
In fact, the whole company is terrific. Forbes Masson is like a blinged-up Ibiza casualty as Leonato, father of the wronged bride Hero (a Kardashian-esque Mara Huf), whose fiance Claudio (James Phoon) looks like he stepped out of a boy band.
It’s Shakespeare as we’ve never seen it before: with a giant inflatable pink heart floating at the rear of the stage like an enormous wobbly bottom
Speaking of bottoms, Hiddleston – who famously bared his in TV smash The Night Manager – plays Benedick like a complacent public school boy. Reprehensibly slick in his silk shirts and pleated strides he coasts along with one eye on his legion of fans in the audience
Tim Steed’s mischief- making Don John is a bitter, balding, pony-tailed queen left on the shelf; while Mason Alexander Park, as the cross-dressing MC, breathily croons All-4-One’s I Swear.
All of them are chivvied along by Gerald Kyd’s lovelorn Duke, Don Pedro, a silver-haired roué who’s spent too long sunning himself on a yacht in Biarritz.
I have seen more complex explorations of the play, but few as good-natured or light-hearted (the use of emoji cartoon heads for the masked ball is a particularly clever touch).
So, as KC And The Sunshine Band might have sung: do a little dance, make a little love, and getteth down tonight.
