A RAVE IN MESSINA
Get da kids into Shakespeare! The world worries about it. So Jamie Lloyd hits a formula hard to beat with one of the sunniest comedies (only one pretend death). So
1) Haul in the stars , ideally with Marvel franchise cred; tell Soutra Gilmour the vibe is clubland, disco fever, so wild lights, bangin’ tunes, a constant rain of pink confetti and a 20ft inflatable heart.
2) Cut the text judiciously, bin Dogberry and Verges and all those stale 17c jokes, but be sure to milk the double-entendres. Use giant furry and spaceman heads for the mask scene (makes it more credible than usual, actually).
3) Divide scenes with a klaxon and some frenetic dancing. And cast Margaret the maid as interval singer every few minutes, aa powerfully crooning Mason Alexander Park whos schtick is playing it androgyne-they. Got it?
I missed press night last week but invested in a matinee seat on the way to the NT (and OMG it is an investment sum, though the raucous mics ensure you will hear from anywhere, and you do well to book balconies anyway. Because this director has not yet learnt that in a theatre with minimal stalls rake , it is unwise to spend the first 25 minutes with the cast mainly sitting down on downstage plastic chairs: heads craned). And to be honest i partly went to assuage a dark suspicion that certain middle-aged critics had only been pretending-yoof in their paeans.
But fair dos! I started out as an honest boomer by disliking it for the opening scene or two, but Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell won me rapidly. Both good Shakespearians, fluent and clear; both inhabiting the spiky pair all the way. Atwell’s grief for Hero is properly wrenching, a strong friend feeling helpless. And oh, Hiddleston! He is a marvellous physical comedian: hiding under foot deep drifts of confetti, getting stuck in the giant rubber heart, collapsing through the floor and dad-dancing. But rueful enough in his final sincerity to make the hairs stand upon your neck.
Of course you lose some of the poetry and the melancholy in a wild gig like this; of course the text’s ideas about “dishonour” and Her’s spotless modest virginity chime oddly with so much twerking in hotpants. But all the cast, including RSC veterans like Forbes Masson, played joyfully into the carnival-festival moods. So yet another of the old fossils fell for it.
Lwtheatres.co.uk to 5 april
rating 4
theatreCat 