Much Ado About Nothing: Shakespeare meets the UEFA Cup? A brilliant concept that goes offside

Telegraph

23-04-2025

The concept is unbeatable. Shakespeare's glorious story of warring former lovers and troubled new romance is now transposed to the glamorous world of top-flight European football, where Messina FC are playing Madrid FC in the Euro League final. Stadium-style moving advertising hoardings stretch around the august Royal Shakespeare Theatre and, as we settle into our seats and wait for the play to start, the unseen on-field action is relayed to us by frenzied commentary. A dramatic late winner means that Messina's captain Benedick (Nick Blood) and his teammates return from the 'battle' in celebratory mood. Let the frolics begin.
Except they don't, particularly. Nothing else in this production from former Donmar Warehouse artistic director Michael Longhurst lives up to the brilliance of his conceit, which includes Benedick's spurned ex Beatrice (Freema Agyeman) as an Alex Scott-style sports broadcaster and villain Don John (Nojan Khazai) as a player with a grudge, substituted in favour of young star striker Claudio (Daniel Adeosun). In fact, these latter two elements are oddly underplayed and need to be far more firmly established to act as useful plot catalysts.
This Leonato (Peter Forbes) is the owner of Messina FC and his daughter Hero (Eleanor Worthington-Cox, giddily excellent) a Scouse-accented wannabe Wag, short of skirt and high of heel. The post-match celebrations take place in Leonato's luxury villa, but unfortunately the early scenes between Beatrice and Benedick, which contain some of the wittiest wordplay in all of Shakespeare, fail to ignite.
Agyeman tends far too much towards stroppy shouting, and we struggle to invest in this backstory of broken love. Compare and contrast with Jamie Lloyd's recent West End production of this same play, where those fine actors Tom Hiddleston and Hayley Atwell sizzled during all this verbal jousting.
The Claudio/Hero romance, always the secondary love story in the play given that Claudio is a dullard and a prig and Hero is given hardly anything to say (by Shakespeare, at least; Longhurst tweaks that a little), takes up almost all of the oxygen here. Beatrice and Benedick too often seem strangely diminished, even though Blood's everyman affability grows in appeal.
My initial scepticism about the relevance of maidenly virginity – the cause of the scuppering of Claudio and Hero's nuptials – to the world of contemporary international footballers was soothed by some ingenious video design (all credit to Tal Rosner) showing Hero in a manipulated and compromising sexual situation. On those same screens where the joyous match score had previously flashed up now run screeds of vicious social media commentary.
Lloyd's production sensibly did away with those ineffably tedious 'comic' characters of malapropism-inclined Dogberry and his fellow security men but, alas, they are back with a loquacious vengeance here, fatally deadening the momentum with a lengthy scene at the start of the second half.
Still, although this production does not constitute a Euro League-clinching success, it is reassuring to see that directors of Longhurst's calibre are now being lured back to Stratford after too long an absence. That fact alone bodes very well for the RSC's future.