TWO STARS

While the Old Vic debuts of Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones in Much Ado About Nothing are a theatrical event of some significance, their casting as sparring lovers Beatrice and Benedick must be judged an artistic error of considerably greater magnitude.

Director Mark Rylance was understandably keen to see the pair reunited on the stage following their West End and Broadway success in Driving Miss Daisy. But this was a production that played to their strength, which, to put it bluntly, was principally their advanced age. It is surely absurd to suppose the couple — she 76, he six years older — could ever make convincing love birds.

Textually, the play contains much to indicate the youthfulness of the two, including Benedick’s famous line — justifying his volte-face over matrimony — “No, the world must be peopled.” That he and his new spouse might assist in this peopling would involve a miracle unparalleled in the history of obstetrics.

Beatrice’s remark that “he hath an excellent stomach” is one of very few observations over which a member of the audience might agree. So roly-poly is he that the notion of his being a formidable fighter is laughable. In his army uniform, indeed — the action is updated to the Second World War — he calls to mind Captain George Mainwaring.

In most of his early appearances in the play he ambles on clutching a yellow mug, giving the impression of an old boy heading off to bed with a hot milky drink.

That many of his lines are inaudible is another problem. National Theatre boss Nick Hytner spoke recently of his ten minutes of incomprehension at the start of any Shakespeare play; here this feeling persists throughout.

Thanks to Ms Redgrave’s greater facility in this area, all is not entirely lost of the celebrated verbal duelling in which the couple indulge.

One is very glad, though, that to a degree their activities can be viewed merely as a sub-plot to the more momentous events involving Beatrice’s cousin Hero (Beth Cooke) and her swain Claudio (Lloyd Everitt).

The machinations of the odious Don John (Danny Lee Wynter) having convinced the lad of his bride’s infidelity, he shockingly disowns her at the altar, to the dismay and later anger of her father Leonato (Michael Elwin). The performance of Mr Lee Wynter is a welcome highlight in this production, suggesting in his languorous disdain a man for whom villainy has been espoused chiefly as an antidote to boredom. There is excellent work, too, from James Garnon as Don John’s ‘good’ brother, Don Pedro.

That all turns out well owes everything to those unlikely upholders of law in the local Watch. Peter Wight is a marvellous Dogberry, a boneheaded bobby in classic style.

 

The Old Vic, London
Until November 30
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