William Shakespeare at Williamson Park, Lancaster:
Much Ado about Nothing
Friday 15 August 2003, 7.30pm.
Reviewed by
This is a curious play to my mind - it can't make up its mind whether to be The
Taming of The Shrew with
the final conciliation of the antagonistic couple, or A Midsummer Night's
Dreamwith the sub-plots of the other lovers and the 'rude mechanicals' of
Dogberry,
Verges and the chronically-slow Watch. There is also a 'death and resurrection
scenario' that recalls Pericles, Twelfth Night and others,
and a vicious bastard brother who propels and perverts the action in a manner
later seen in King Lear and King John - another under-rated
piece which
I was delighted to catch in Scarborough last year.
So what, you say, of last week's show? Chapterhouse Theatre Company, familiar to Lancaster audiences over their four years of existence, did a wonderful job. If the play is a curious mix of curate's egg and the most delicious soufflé followed by a soupy and frothy Zabaglione, so too was the production. After a stunning masque and dance to set both tone and pace, that initial momentum flagged somewhat with the rather too laid-back banter of Beatrice and Benedick.
But not for long. The asynchronous Watch displayed remarkable cohesion (if not co-ordination) in a wild display of Morris Dancing, complete with sticks, preserve us, and a wonderful song from the diaphanous Verges. What the main pair of 'lovers' lacked early on was more than compensated for by the sensitivity and pace of the 'other' couple, Hero and Claudio. The amorous to-ings and fro-ings culminated in a heart-stopping wedding scene with an Iberian-Moorish masque, mime, music and dancing to tingle the spine and move the auditory as well as the visual senses.
The pace gained further momentum as the coruscating language, with a further
accretion of the malapropisms enjoyed the previous night in Merry
Wives, was
delivered with ever-increasing confidence and speed. These players not only fully
understood all aspects of the text (not least the bawdry) but delivered it with
clarity and lucidity. They know how to tweak those heartstrings, and the 'memorial'
scene, wherein Claudio laments his supposedly-deceased wife, was one of the most
moving things I have seen stage in some while. Uniting music, movement and words,
the illusion of total grief and finality was complete - you could have heard
a pin drop.
Again, not for long, for the varying levels of plot resolve themselves into a cathartic and rumbustuous final reconciliation. As well as Hero and Claudio, also outstanding was the stoic reserve of Leonato, which strongly evoked the stage charisma of the much-maligned Patrick Stewart in some of his more terrestrial roles. And Beatrice and Benedick upped the tempo too with appropriate gusto as both they and the plot got more bewildering and bewildered.
But one character stands out beyond all others. That was the youthful Richard Baker who, thankfully, bears no resemblance to his much older BBC namesake. His portrayal of Verges, a 'Headborough' (parish officer, or perhaps headbanger?) was a cross between Sgt Bilko on speed ('Yip!-Yip!-Yip!')and Julian Clary. He also has a wonderful tenor voice which was used to great effect - seriously, this time, in the songs which enhance the play's more sombre moments. His diction, as clear as that of anyone else in the production, was complemented by his outrageous body language (I can't work out whether it was goose- or chicken-stepping) and his amazing vocal range.
But this is not to deny the all-round excellence of the rest of the cast. Baker is no cheap show-stealer any more than the comic Will Kemp can have been in Shakespeare's day. His contribution was just one of many which served to highlight the ability and vision of director Karen Crow, who has found, integrated and controlled an up-and coming polymath of great potential. She has also created a thoroughly moving, musically exotic and visually delightful evening which resolved all my earlier reservations about this glorious play.
This is a curious play to my mind - it can't make up its mind whether to be The
Taming of The Shrew with
the final conciliation of the antagonistic couple, or A Midsummer Night's
Dreamwith the sub-plots of the other lovers and the 'rude mechanicals' of
Dogberry,
Verges and the chronically-slow Watch. There is also a 'death and resurrection
scenario' that recalls Pericles, Twelfth Night and others,
and a vicious bastard brother who propels and perverts the action in a manner
later seen in King Lear and King John - another under-rated
piece which
I was delighted to catch in Scarborough last year.
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