Writer: William Shakespeare
Director: Chelsea Walker
Leonato, the grey-bearded governor of Messina who opens Shakespeare’s Much Ado about Nothing, is often a slightly formal, elderly character. His gravitas contrasts with the playful high spirits of the young soldiers, returned from the wars, whose loves, hates, and jealousies are about to erupt into the peaceful city. In Chelsea Walker’s wonderfully fresh and thoughtful modern-dress production, Jonathan McGuinness is a sprightly Leonato, running onstage in shades and swimming trunks to hear that the prince Don Pedro (a similarly upbeat Adam Long) is coming to stay.
His niece Beatrice (Pippa Nixon) is a comedian. The other characters smile and laugh as she entertains them with her barbed comments about Signor Benedick. Throwing themselves into the “merry war” that lies at the heart of the play, Nixon’s passionate Beatrice and Ken Nwosu as a warm, twinkling Benedick are variously witty, acerbic, tender and poignant. Nwosu’s occasionally garbled lines are delivered with perfect measures of humour and informality.
Their first exchange is peppered with animal metaphors (parrots, horses, dogs). “A bird of my tongue is better than a beast of yours,” quips Beatrice. Walker has highlighted this bestial imagery with Beatrice howling like a dog when she says she’d rather hear that than “a man swear he loves me”. The prince’s self-confessedly villainous brother Don John (played with volatile menace by Joseph Potter) barks as he says he is “entrusted with a muzzle” and snaps his teeth unnervingly as he says he would “bite”.
Designer Sami Fendall, who has excelled herself with sparkling ballgowns and snappy funeral-wear, leans into the theme with leopard prints and a stag-do featuring antlers, a leather harness, and oversized animal onesies. Robert Allsopp and associates have fashioned ominously unnerving creatures’ heads for the ball scene that make far more sense of the subsequent mistaken identities than most masks do. Leonato’s daughter Hero is a sheep, and Beatrice a bird, while the men are bulls and lions. Don John has a green snake’s head, and his co-conspirator Borachio (Marlowe Chan-Reeves) is a leopard.
In 2024, Chelsea Walker directed a thought-provoking All’s Well that Ends Well in the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, which challenged any easy reading of the play’s morality. Here she brings her well-judged modernising force to another complicated comedy with similarly insightful results. Assa Kanouté gives Hero a beautifully poised innocence, matching Joshua John’s naïvely charming Claudio. Walker sets out to give the notoriously silent Hero more agency. In a stroke of genius, the friar, who plays a decisive role in the second half of the play, has become a nun (“Sister”). Geraldine Alexander, most recently familiar as housekeeper Mrs Wilson in Netflix drama Bridgerton, is empathetic and empowering. A few of her lines are given to Hero, along with some control over the plot. Both women are centralised by the thrust stage. Usually, Hero’s role is defined by submission to various men (her father, her fiancé, the friar). In this version, Sister helps her find her voice. A programme essay by Hailey Bachrach makes a convincing case for subtly updating Shakespeare’s script without changing the text by reassigning a few lines.
Extraneous roles have been pruned, and each character is fully developed. Borachio, whom Richard Katz as witless, self-important security guard Dogberry keeps calling “Gazpacho”, is a con with a conscience. Matilda Bailes, playing highly-sexed housekeeper Margaret, is given plenty of scope for witty banter and remorse. Borachio’s companion has been cut, so the coked-up villain makes his vital confession aloud to himself while urinating. The disappearance of the Sexton means Dogberry is slightly more useful than usual despite dialling up the malapropisms.
The set is minimal – just the pillars and white staircase leading up to the musicians’ gallery – leaving room for some sharp, pulsing choreography involving fluid hip thrusts and chest pops. Angus MacRae has composed a beautifully atmospheric and understated score for three cellos and a guitar, plus plenty of percussion from Musical Director Zands Duggan. Don John’s wickedness is accompanied by a thunderous growl of drums and woodblocks while Sister’s pivotal speech and other key moments are buoyed up by swelling strings.
Props are allowed to clutter the stage only if they can add a crucial metaphorical dimension. The scenes where Benedick and Beatrice eavesdrop on their friends make use of Hero’s wedding preparations. A trolley of white flowers and a hanging basket are deployed so that both characters end up soaking wet as well as symbolically drenched by what they’ve heard. Later, the wedding cake and cake knife find grimly purposeful roles.
Chelsea Walker’s Much Ado is a triumphant joy. She does not ignore the play’s dark sides but works intelligently through them in a way that is satisfying and enlightening. This production feels both refreshingly contemporary and deeply Shakespearean. Walker’s directorial brilliance works with the text, not against it, to create something radiant and new.
Runs until 24 October 2026
