Two "Much Ados' in London

Two delicious and hilarious productions of Much Ado About Nothing are currently playing in London: one at the Globe, where "original practices" rule, and one on the West End, where high profiles and high concepts rule. I've rarely sat among audiences that enjoyed themselves so thoroughly.

In Shakespeare's most festive comedy, Beatrice and Benedick spar wittily, entertaining themselves as well each other (not to mention us). These rare lovers are neither young nor naÓ¯ve, neither heartsick nor desperate. Both have forsworn marriage, and we happily watch these clever, sophisticated people proved wrong, both about marriage and about each other.

They're brought together by friends' plotting: When each overhears that the other is crazy in love with him/her, they succumb to what has been true all along, and, declaring, "The world must be peopled!" finally fall into each other's arms.

Why so malevolent?

Of course there are subplots: Hero and Claudio, young and naÓ¯ve, are about to be married, but wicked Don John is one of Shakespeare's malevolent creatures who does harm because"“ well, who knows why? Because it amuses him, because he cannot not, because he envies and hates. The subplots cause temporary havoc in the general happiness, but of course that's what subplots are for.

The enchanting Globe, where pigeons occasionally fly past the actors and kisses are cheered and villainy booed by the audience in lusty 16th-Century style, is one of my favorite theatrical venues. For its Much Ado the stage is festooned (what else for "festive comedy"?) with flowers and orange trees.

Merry and messy

The superb Eve Best plays a Beatrice who's merry and messy— a woman who clearly hasn't looked in a mirror in ages. Benedick is played by Charles Edwards, an actor whose sardonic manner and privately amused glances are reminiscent of Bill Nighy. The chemistry projected by Best and Edwards is not so much sexual as friendly— they like each other, admire each other and, despite all barbs and jabs, trust each other.

As for the young couple, Ony Uhiara as Hero is beautiful but finally thin-voiced and, in this production, a distinctly a minor character, a pawn of the plot. Philip Cumbus is a splendid and endearing Claudio: utterly sincere, convincingly military and inexperienced in this world of romance.

Jeremy Herrin's direction manages to be both goofy and vigorous, and the language is spoken with clarity and naturalness, allowing Eve Best to first declaim against Benedick's endless talking, and then follow the Shakespearean line with a glance at us and a muttered, "Blah, blah, blah."

Hung over and chain-smoking

The West End production of Much Ado stars two names who are very big to London audiences: Catherine Tate, a hugely popular TV comedienne, and David Tennant of "Doctor Who." As set by director Josie Rourke in the 1980s in Gibraltar, the guys arrive in Navy whites after Britain's Falklands skirmish. This, it will turn out, makes no sense.

Tennant is adorable in an unshaven, skinny way; he hardly looks like the man's man— a professional soldier— that Benedick is supposed to be. Tate isn't an actress: she provides schtick instead: a crude, louche Beatrice, sloppy and hung over and chain-smoking. There is little elegance of mind on display in either Beatrice or Benedick, allowing some of Shakespeare's best lines to go by as merely ways to advance the plot.

The dual bachelor and bachelorette parties for Hero and Claudio are noisy, hard rock spectacles with their lap-dancing strippers, which makes nonsense of the plot's basis that Hero presumably dies of shame, having being dishonored on her wedding day, while her enraged, shamed father wishes her dead if she's not virginal. Clearly, somebody didn't think this 1980s idea through.

This production is already a huge summertime hit. But its need for novelty schlocks up Shakespeare pointlessly.

Unamusing and charmless

The other show I saw at the Globe— All's Well that Ends Well—has one of those complicated, implausible plots filled with characters whose motivations are rarely intelligible; the action hinges on the nasty young count Bertram (Sam Crane), who is not only a snob and a fool but dangerously "ruttish." The girl who loves him, Helena (Ellie Piercy), is given no coherent character by Shakespeare—she's sometimes pitiable, sometimes remarkably enterprising and confident.

This "dark comedy" is not only unamusing; the Globe production is charmless as well: John Dove directs on a bare and colorless stage with such awkward blocking that the audience can rarely see the character being addressed, so all the drama of reactions is unavailable. The young lovers have no chemistry; the stock stupid servant is both repulsive and pathetic; and only the stentorian King of France seems like a human being.

I'm with Samuel Johnson on this one: "I cannot reconcile my heart to Bertram; a man noble without generosity, and young without truth; who marries Helena as a coward, and leaves her as a profligate: When she is dead by his unkindness, sneaks home to a second marriage, is accused by a woman whom he has wronged, defends himself by falsehood, and is dismissed to happiness" (Notes on the plays of Shakespeare, 1765).♦


To read more London theater reviews by Toby Zinman, click here.