Stratford
By
Irving Wardle
Times
4/82
With this production Terry Hands completes a trilogy of the middle-period
comedies and, unlike Twelfth Night and As You Like
It, he has got it right first time. Coming
in the immediate wake and in total contrast to the National Theatre version, the
show is sheer enchantment.
For once that handy phrase describes the approach as well as the
spectators’ response. At both
ends of the play, Hands extends the action beyond the textual limits, setting
the tone with the opening tableau of a Vermeer-like cellist and the closing
sight of Beatrice and Benedick left alone on stage holding an inaudibly
inexhaustible conversation under the fading light.
It is a fable of two people who were meant for each other.
For their environment Ralph Koltai supplies an elemental space provided
by a series of stenciled perspex walls; a transparent labyrinth where dazzling
foreground scenes are played against lights of winking stars until a huge orange
sun finally descends on an empty stage.
The walls serve numerous uses, but their main contribution, assisted by
stark black and white costume, is to project the diurnal contrast of light and
darkness so as to resolve the near tragedy of Hero within the comic boundaries.
As with the two previous productions, Mr. Hands treats Much
Ado as a comedy of growing up: if
there is a penalty for this it comes at the start, which introduces Sinead
Cusack’s Beatrice as a bouncy, over-emphatic flirt, forever showing off to
circles of silently convulsed admirers, and bringing you wholly into sympathy
with Derek Jacobi’s Benedick.
This impression survives only to their second meeting when Benedick’s
peremptory exit reduces her to the brink of tears, and from that point on both
performances develop into as humanely funny an exploration of their relationship
as I have seen. Mr. Jacobi is not at all the usual military figure, though he
can command a fine martial ring when announcing that the world must be peopled.
Much of the way he plays the underdog, his voice full of wheedling and
impotently exasperated inflections, often playing the mock innocent with
farcically prolonged vowels.
The production treats them as very different people, establishing the
contrast most boldly in the eavesdropping scenes.
Benedick is played as superbly inventive comedy, with repeated
embarrassing returns by the boy who finally throws the book after his master’s
retreating back. But when Beatrice turns up for the treatment, comedy is
abruptly switched off.
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