much ado about nothing
Saw David Tennant and Catherine Tate in Much Ado About Nothing at Wyndham's Theatre last night.
The best part about it was, as expected, David Tennant's mercurial delivery and capacity for physical comedy. This was especially brilliant in one key scene where Benedick thinks he is hiding from Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato while they, completely in the know, loudly proclaim Beatrice's love for Benedick. On a slowly rotating stage which maximises the audience's field of view, Tennant fumbles and rolls around in Seth Cohen-style stealth and ends up completely covered in white paint. Absolutely hysterical.
I'm a little more hesitant about Catherine Tate's performance, which is pretty much the way she acts in anything - broad. Sometimes it worked (cue slowly crawling across the stage under a sheet in a classic "if I can't see you then you can't see me" pretense), sometimes less so (later in the same scene where she's strung up in an aerial harness, flailing in the air for the best part of five minutes).
That said, I loved how they bounced off each other. One of my favourite scenes came late in the piece, where Beatrice and Benedick loudly proclaim how much they do not love each other and, when presented with hand-written love poetry that they each had secretly written, eye each other up and proceed to prance to the front of the stage in perfect unison, flick open the notes and read them, their faces simultaneously falling as they realise they were truly terrible poets. After the whole Doctor-Donna thing it's no surprise that they can mirror each other's mannerisms to amazing comic effect, but it was still awesome to watch.
The staging is fun 80s Gibraltar. I had a huge laugh at Hero's blatant Princess Di stylings. One of the reviews I read noted "it is hard to believe that a girl who had a hen night as raucous as Hero's would swoon at the altar when accused of wantonness", which is probably the most glaring "plot hole" in terms of this particular setting. But generally the setting and costuming were very fun to watch. The plot got surprisingly dark at a time, I thought, but "surprisingly dark" seems often the case with Shakespeare's comedies.
Fannish yayz: ♥ David Tennant with Scottish accent ♥ and look at awesome military garb he gets to wear ♥ ♥ There was also a costume party scene where he's dressed in a glittery black midriff top, short denim miniskirt and black leggings, and wears a curly blonde wig and bright red lipstick. :D It rather reminded me of the DW spoof where he dressed up in spectacular drag as the Doctor's Companion, but sadly a YT search shows the videos have been taken down for copyright, boos.
The best part about it was, as expected, David Tennant's mercurial delivery and capacity for physical comedy. This was especially brilliant in one key scene where Benedick thinks he is hiding from Don Pedro, Claudio and Leonato while they, completely in the know, loudly proclaim Beatrice's love for Benedick. On a slowly rotating stage which maximises the audience's field of view, Tennant fumbles and rolls around in Seth Cohen-style stealth and ends up completely covered in white paint. Absolutely hysterical.
I'm a little more hesitant about Catherine Tate's performance, which is pretty much the way she acts in anything - broad. Sometimes it worked (cue slowly crawling across the stage under a sheet in a classic "if I can't see you then you can't see me" pretense), sometimes less so (later in the same scene where she's strung up in an aerial harness, flailing in the air for the best part of five minutes).
That said, I loved how they bounced off each other. One of my favourite scenes came late in the piece, where Beatrice and Benedick loudly proclaim how much they do not love each other and, when presented with hand-written love poetry that they each had secretly written, eye each other up and proceed to prance to the front of the stage in perfect unison, flick open the notes and read them, their faces simultaneously falling as they realise they were truly terrible poets. After the whole Doctor-Donna thing it's no surprise that they can mirror each other's mannerisms to amazing comic effect, but it was still awesome to watch.
The staging is fun 80s Gibraltar. I had a huge laugh at Hero's blatant Princess Di stylings. One of the reviews I read noted "it is hard to believe that a girl who had a hen night as raucous as Hero's would swoon at the altar when accused of wantonness", which is probably the most glaring "plot hole" in terms of this particular setting. But generally the setting and costuming were very fun to watch. The plot got surprisingly dark at a time, I thought, but "surprisingly dark" seems often the case with Shakespeare's comedies.
Fannish yayz: ♥ David Tennant with Scottish accent ♥ and look at awesome military garb he gets to wear ♥ ♥ There was also a costume party scene where he's dressed in a glittery black midriff top, short denim miniskirt and black leggings, and wears a curly blonde wig and bright red lipstick. :D It rather reminded me of the DW spoof where he dressed up in spectacular drag as the Doctor's Companion, but sadly a YT search shows the videos have been taken down for copyright, boos.