Much Ado About Nothing starts out with the actors dancing to Taylor Dayne’s ‘Tell it to my Heart.’ Well, it’s a Jamie Lloyd production, so all bets are off, and anything goes.
Lloyd is the man who reinvented theatre with his brilliant 2023 production of ‘Sunset Boulevard’, though he reins it in a bit with this show that is very similar to his 2019 ‘Cyrano de Bergerac’, starring James MacAvoy, which also used pop songs as a form of expression to tell its story. Shakespeare’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing,’ which has had many iterations on lots of stages worldwide with this version bringing major star wattage as Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell who play the leads Benedick and Beatrice – meant for each other but somehow never find the right time or moment to make it happen. Romance is also on the cards for Claudio and Hero (James Phoon and Mara Huf, fresh off the so-so ‘The Tempest,’ another Lloyd production). So ‘So Much Ado About Nothing’ is an ode to love and romance where the story unfolds with pop songs including ‘Gonna Make You Sweat’ (CC Music Factory) and other songs by the Backstreet Boys and Dee-Lite (the classic ‘Groove is in the Heart’ is the perfect song for this type of show). It’s all done tongue and cheek style with a few throwbacks to the audience, including Tom who seductively unbutton his shirt to show off a major six-pack and playing up to the crowd who crackle and scream for him, it’s all wink and nod and we are all in the know type of theatre.
This show is definitely not one for the tourists, there are no sets (in typical Jamie Lloyd fashion), presumably no costume design budget, no razzle dazzle dance numbers, very simple lighting, and not a typical jukebox musical that tourists love. However, this will draw in fans of Hiddleston and Atwell who know them from their Marvel characters (Hiddleston for Loki in Thor and The Avengers and Atwell for Avengers films (in fact, cardboard cutouts of these characters appear briefly on stage, mixing reality with fiction as the story unfolds). And there is confetti, lots of confetti, that continuously comes down from the rafters, along with a huge blown up red heart at the back of the stage, and the message we get is that this show is all about love, party, and romance, pretty much ado about nothing.
Much Ado About Nothing is on until April 5, 2025
Photo by Marc Brenner