{"id":3469,"date":"2025-03-12T13:00:34","date_gmt":"2025-03-12T13:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/?p=3469"},"modified":"2025-03-12T10:39:31","modified_gmt":"2025-03-12T10:39:31","slug":"theatre-review-much-ado-about-nothing-by-the-jamie-lloyd-company-at-the-theatre-royal-drury-lane","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/2025\/03\/12\/theatre-review-much-ado-about-nothing-by-the-jamie-lloyd-company-at-the-theatre-royal-drury-lane\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Review: Much Ado About Nothing by the Jamie Lloyd Company, at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane"},"content":{"rendered":"

Izzi is a Master\u2019s student on the Shakespeare Studies MA at King\u2019s and the Globe Theatre, having completed her undergraduate degree in Classics and English at the University of Oxford. As her MA suggests, she loves all things Shakespeare and early modern drama, and she regularly watches and reviews modern productions of Shakespeare plays. Although you wouldn\u2019t know it from how much she loved\u00a0Much Ado, Izzi\u2019s research focuses on bodily violence on the early modern stage.<\/em><\/p>\n

Izzi has written the below review for the most recent production of Much Ado About Nothing <\/em>(2025): Jamie Lloyd Company, Theatre Royal Drury Lane.<\/p>\n

Verdict: 5 stars<\/strong><\/p>\n

Coming off the back of his rather dark and pessimistic production of The Tempest, Jamie Lloyd\u2019s Much Ado About Nothing couldn\u2019t be more refreshingly different. The bleak and barren sand dunes of Prospero\u2019s island have been swapped for a stage covered in bright pink confetti, with a massive pink heart floating at the back of the stage. Lloyd re-imagines Shakespeare\u2019s Sicilian comedy in a world of 90s disco, glittery jumpsuits, and massive Masked Singer-cum-Disneyland headpieces to absolutely fabulous success.<\/p>\n

While in his Tempest the casting of Sigourney Weaver as a female Prospero was somewhat disappointing, Lloyd\u2019s choice of Hollywood A-listers in the form of Marvel\u2019s Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell is inspired. The pair\u2019s flirtatious repartee during the opening scenes perfectly captures the constant exchange of digs between Beatrice and Benedick, Messina\u2019s most eligible bachelor and bachelorette. Both make perfect use of their Hollywood heartthrob status when appealing to the audience: Hiddleston delivers Benedick\u2019s iconically self-centred line \u2018I am loved of all ladies\u2019 to rapturous applause and wolf-whistles, and the two of them seem to delight in dancing suggestively together wherever possible. The pair\u2019s physical comedy during their respective trickery scenes is delightful, with Hiddleston\u2019s attempts to hide himself with armfuls of pink confetti bringing the house down.<\/p>\n

The production is high energy, high camp, and high fun-factor, motivated by a soundtrack of 90\u2019s bangers, often sung by Mason Alexander-Park\u2019s Margaret, accompanied by group dance numbers. That is, until a poignant switch in mood created by Claudio\u2019s bitter condemnation of Hero at the altar for her alleged infidelity, egged on by Don John, played by Tim Steed. Steed brilliantly approaches the tricky John the Bastard plotline by showing himself consciously adopting the persona of a vaudevillian villain, complete with pantomime \u2018mwah-hah-hah-hah\u2019, in order to wreak havoc in Don Pedro\u2019s court. His seemingly frivolous mischief, however, creates terrible consequences for Mara Huf\u2019s Hero, whose speech in defence of her honour is powerfully resonant in a post Me Too world. This tricky scene, which can leave a bitter taste in the mouth of a modern audience when the couple reconcile, was expertly navigated: I was pleasantly surprised to find myself genuinely happy for Hero and Claudio when they reunite at the end of the play alongside the loved-up Beatrice and Benedick.<\/p>\n

Jamie Lloyd\u2019s Much Ado About Nothing is an absolute must-see if you\u2019re a fan of Shakespeare, a fan of theatre, a fan of disco, a fan of Tom Hiddleston, a fan of pink\u2026 the list goes on.<\/p>\n

By Izzi Strevens<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Izzi is a Master\u2019s student on the Shakespeare Studies MA at King\u2019s and the Globe Theatre, having completed her undergraduate degree in Classics and English at the University of Oxford. As her MA suggests, she loves all things Shakespeare and early modern drama, and she regularly watches and reviews modern productions of Shakespeare plays. Although […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1337,"featured_media":3471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-early-modern-and-shakespeare","category-life-writing-creative-writing-and-performance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1337"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3469"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3476,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3469\/revisions\/3476"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kcl.ac.uk\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}