Much Ado About Nothing review – screwball Shakespeare goes with a swing

Lovers and fighters convene at an opulent Sicilian lodge, although the battle gained in the beginning of Shakespeare’s comedy appears reasonably imprecise right here: there's an air of celebration and a few army uniforms however no fascist iconography or any giveaway clue. Is Mussolini’s reign the backdrop to the enjoyable and revelry upfront? It could possibly be the jazz age or equally a nook of the Nineteen Thirties untouched by conflict.

However by no means thoughts the element as a result of Simon Godwin’s manufacturing doesn't search to commit itself to something as prosaic as actuality. This Sicily is located in an vague “imagined previous” which seems like a decadent Twentieth-century fantasyland.

That is the Nationwide Theatre’s second comedy with two romances at its coronary heart this season (to accompany Jack Absolute Flies Once more, which opened final week). It brings a straightforward sense of enjoyable, then a quick flip into darkness, earlier than gliding again to froth once more.

There's a stay swing band, with Dario Rossetti-Bonell as music director, plus music, dance (each glorious) and Evie Gurney’s beautiful costume designs of slinky silks, ostrich feathers and glittered fits, which channel a glamorous Fred and Ginger vibe.

Extraordinarily simple on the attention … Ashley Zhangazha and Ioanna Kimbook in A lot Ado About Nothing on the Nationwide Theatre. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

Anna Fleischle’s artwork deco stage design has cool mints and pinks – as if fetched up from the ocean liner in Something Goes on the Barbican. It feels like Cole Porter, too, at occasions. That is Shakespeare within the swing age, its drama was fashionable screwball comedy. It's a stable conceit, executed effectively, which will get higher within the second half after Hero and Claudio’s aborted wedding ceremony.

The comedy is to be admired right here reasonably than loved for full-on laughs. Pivotal scenes of eavesdropping and comedian deceit, when Benedick and Beatrice are fooled into admitting their love for one another, seem like fastidiously choreographed slapstick, neat and stylish (in contrast to Lucy Bailey’s latest manufacturing on the Globe which had fizzing set items of bodily comedy across the characters’ gulling).

Dorkish … John Heffernan as Benedick in A lot Ado About Nothing on the Nationwide Theatre. Photograph: Manuel Harlan

John Heffernan shines brightest as a dorkish Benedick; Katherine Parkinson’s Beatrice is wry and cute however she is, surprisingly, not at her most interesting in comedy mode. Their sniping doesn't mild up the stage and they're, in reality, rather more convincing in probably the most dramatic a part of the play once they persuade us of their ardent love – and Beatrice’s shock at cousin Hero’s public shaming. Godwin navigates the awkwardness of this play’s components masterfully, and there are sudden plunges into critical drama, like synapses inside the comedy, which reveal simply how managed a manufacturing that is in its tonal modifications.

Eben Figueiredo stands out for his portrayal of Claudio, who activates his betrothed Hero (Ioanna Kimbook) so savagely. He brings the identical smiling lover’s vapidity to this position as he did to Jamie Lloyd’s Cyrano de Bergerac, talking in conspicuous London cadences, however there's jealous depth there too, and a real sense of remorse. Wendy Kweh’s Antonia (gender-switched from the unique Antonio, and now Hero’s mom) overshadows Leonato (Rufus Wright) along with her righteous ardour and rage within the scenes after Hero has been exonerated.

One other triumph is in making the painfully strained illogicality of Dogberry’s (David Fynn) humour work. Right here, the usually protracted scenes of arcane humour transfer at fairly a tempo and keep away from longueurs.

The manufacturing doesn't, maybe, plunge deeply sufficient into the play’s darkness, and nobody actor instructions our consideration, however all of them type a really ready ensemble. It doesn't search to make any newly trenchant factors in regards to the gender conflict hidden in plain view both, with the lads’s outright mistrust of girls within the plotline and Beatrice’s subversion of female obedience and conference. However it is a polished fantasy, extraordinarily simple on the attention and a consummate midsummer comedy. You stroll away not massively moved or shocked – however definitely entertained.

• On the Nationwide Theatre’s Lyttelton theatre, London, till 10 September.