Queen’s Building, Emmanuel
November 25-29
Dir. Katherine Jenkins & Dan MacPherson; Revived Emmanuel Dramatic Society

Four Stars

It might only be a show put on by the Emmanuel College Freshers, but this Much Ado About Nothing is a top-notch production nonetheless. This group of actors provide a one-act version of Shakespeare’s comedy with a novel twist – the 1940s setting. The gentlemen are in military uniform, the ladies wear elegant yet austere dresses, and the whole production exudes a delightful air of Casablanca-esque wartime glamour.

When it comes to romantic couples, Aidan Russell and Julia Petrenko might not be in the league of Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman just yet, but they provide a winning combination of silly idealism and tortured anguish as the lovers Claudio and Hero. If you are looking for laughs at this comedy, however, then the real star of the show is James Parkinson as the irrepressible Dogberry. Parkinson skulks around the stage with panache and voices Dogberry’s malapropisms (“O Villain! Thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this”) with a cockney accent that combines jauntiness and complete idiocy. It is a fitting performance for one of Shakespeare’s greatest comic characters.

Parkinson’s skulking provides a welcome contrast to the static nature of the other actors, who all too often stood stock-still for minutes on end. Indeed this lack of movement from the actors on stage is the one thing that detracts from the otherwise excellent individual performances. It may well be a device to convey the formality of social relations in the forties, but even if that is the case it still makes the performance painfully stilted at times. The bursts of jazzy forties music and dancing could not quite conceal this problem. Nor is it helped by the lack of props on stage. There have been many great productions of Shakespeare that used less props than the table, three chairs and a bench that were on show here, but these actors ran out of ideas for how to use these props inventively.

Nonetheless, this is an enjoyable production, and it is all the more impressive for being a shortened version of Shakespeare’s play. Much Ado has often been criticized for leaving too many loose ends (What does happen to the villain Don John?), yet these Freshers still manage after just an hour-and-a-bit to present a stirring finale of love triumphant. If you feel like a bite-sized chunk of Shakespeare with some forties’ ambiance, then this is the play for you.

Mike Kielty