MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING. To 13 March.
St Andrews
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING
by William Shakespeare
Byre Theatre To 13 March 2004
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat 3,6,10,13 March 2.30pm
Audio-described/BSL Signed 11 March, 13 March 2.30pm
After show Talkabout 8 March
Runs 3hr 5min Two intervals
TICKETS: 01334 475000
Review: Timothy Ramsden 27 February
Interesting enterprise, tame production.There haven't been that many imaginative ideas in Arts funding but the scheme involving the charitable Esmee Fairbairn Trust and the English and Scottish Arts Councils is one. Operating in 9 theatres, at roughly two a year, the scheme allows young directors to shadow existing Artistic Directors in building based companies for 12 months.
It's aimed at developing not just play directors but a new generation of people ready to take on the range of demands met in running and developing a theatre company. It also means the selected directors have a chance to do a main-stage show during their year, rather than being assigned just assistant directing, education work, a studio or late-night piece, and maybe the Christmas show.
London's Young Vic kicked it off, and with 2 more to go the most successful production so far has probably been Sheffield Crucible's Iphigeneia directed by the already experienced Anna Mackmin (now well-embedded in Michael Grandage's phenomenal Sheffield/Donmar Warehouse regime.
In St Andrews, Steven Little has a tough assignment. Shakespeare means handling a large cast in a long play on a small stage - 12 actors still leaves a lot of doubling. Jimmy Chisholm adds a minor role in Messina's amateurish police force to his central Benedick, while Ian Skewis's anonymous messenger announces his main character's capture.
The play has three plots to manipulate lovers. Two comic ones to make Benedick and Beatrice admit they love each other in the first half. Then Don John's potentially tragic plot to separate young lovers Hero and Claudio. This later action is inexplicably divided by a second interval, slowing momentum and making a longish evening despite a cut text.
Dogberry keeps his innumeracy but loses some of his proto-malapropisms (no great loss perhaps). More, while Chisholm silently lets his hair down as Benedick bye-bye ponytail - we lose the comic embarrassment with which this former anti-romantic tries to keep his spruce-up beard-shaving from his friends. Shakespeare thought it worth a scene; it's certainly more worthwhile than an unnecessary extra interval.
Overall this gentle production lacks energy and tension it's the kind of thing that was already seeming quaint 40 years ago. One rule decades in the stalls teaches is that laughter among the audience requires seriousness on stage. Here, everyone seems to be infected with whiffs of laughing gas. They can't stop smiling, grinning or shaking their sides.
Amanda Beveridge's ever-smiling, laughing Beatrice gives no sense of any deep feeling, towards Benedick or anyone. She's a polite party-hostess on best manners, a shallow person presenting a please-all persona.
Benedick's soliloquies have their energy dissipated by constant business and unnecessary, distracting movement. It happens throughout. The production appears not to trust script, actor or audience, requiring everything to be emphasised by over-active facial expression, unnecessary gesture or exaggerated vocal emphasis.
Some life emerges with Claire Knight's cross-gender, moustachioed Dogberry, reined in tight by clothing and male manner, providing an oasis from over-expression, for once treating us like adults able to understand what's going on. That apart, much ado, yielding little.
Leonato: Billy Riddoch
Beatrice: Amanda Beveridge
Hero: Joanne Bett
Dion Pedro/George Seacoal: Jay Manley
Benedick/Watch: Jimmy Chisholm
Don John: Ian Skewis
Claudio/Watch 2: Robert Mountford
Antonio/Conrade: Terry Wale
Borachio/Friar Francis/Messenger: John Paul Hurley
Balthasar/Verges: Antony Strachan
Margaret/Dogberry: Claire Knight
Ursula/Sexton: Kay Gallie
Cast members from St Andrews Youth Theatre: Finn Anderson, Euan Dickson, Rory MacLeod, Aaron Williamson
Director: Steven Little
Designer: Jon Bausor
Lighting: Ace McCarron
Composer: Jane Watkins
Choreographer: Kristin Johnson
Voice coach: Alex Gillon
2004-03-02 08:15:09