Yesterday I went to see David Tennant & Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing at the Wyndham’s Theatre in the West End of London. It was one of the best productions of the play that I have seen – and I’ve seen quite a few, this was the second version I’ve seen this year. The Kenneth Branagh film is one of my favourites and, a few years’ ago, I saw Tamsin Greig give one of the best stage performances I’ve ever seen as Beatrice in a fantastic production set in pre-revolutionary Cuba. I like Shakespeare’s comedies. I know it’s supposed to be the tragedies that are the best but there are far too few jokes in Hamlet for my liking.
But I have to admit that I was worried that I wouldn’t enjoy this production. The early reviews had been quite poor comparing it unfavourably with the one that is currently running at the Globe, although Michael Billington gave it a good write-up in the Guardian.
Why are there so many productions of Much Ado, a play that was written before 1600? Well, it’s still funny, most people can recognize the situation of a couple who quarrel all the time despite themselves and it fills theatres. Presumably, that’s also the reason why so many Shakespeare plays in the recent past have cast actors better known for television roles in leading parts: Tennant (again) in Hamlet, Tamsin Greig fresh from Black Books and Green Wing in Much Ado & – also from Green Wing – Michelle Gomez, reprising her harridan role in a truly terrible production of The Taming of the Shrew. Then there’s Lenny Henry, of course. I’ve not seen him on stage, so I’ve no idea how good an actor he is. I’m sure all of them deserve their roles but I would just question whether other, lower-profile actors are losing out to stars and celebrities.
I saw David Tennant in an RSC production of The Rivals at Stratford long before Dr. Who had been revived and had seen him on TV in Casanova, so I knew him to be a good actor. I thought he was fine as Dr. Who but it’s not a subject I have strong feelings about. I’m glad he’s gone back to acting. But the choice of Catherine Tate, who had been his companion in Dr. Who, as Beatrice, certainly gave me the impression that both of them had been cast to attract the punters.
It can be annoying, as someone who has been going to see RSC productions for years, to suddenly find it difficult to buy tickets. When Tennant played Hamlet in Stratford, I could only find tickets in the gods and in front of me were hundreds of teenage girls, most of whom left at half-time. Likewise, for this Much Ado. If I hadn’t bought tickets online on the day the news of the casting was announced (thank you, Twitter) I wouldn’t have even got the seats I did which were in the top balcony. When I was queueing at the toilets during yesterday’s interval, the girls in front of me were breathlesslessly discussing the star: “Don’t you think he looks handsome in that uniform?”
This time, though, I think all the teenage girl fans came back for the second, much more serious part of the play and stayed until the end. There didn’t seem to be any empty seats this time. Tennant and Tate were both excellent, playing B & B as rather shallow thirty-somethings. So I conclude that my concerns were misplaced. Of all the “stars” that I’ve seen in Shakespeare plays (even Roger Daltry in the 1970s BBC version of Comedy of Errors) most of them have been excellent. The whole cast received a standing ovation at the end of yesterday’s performance, something which I’ve never seen at a matinee performance and it was well-deserved
No comments:
Post a Comment