Last year's wash-out summer almost put the future of Bard in the Botanics in jeopardy, but the weather for first week for Much Ado About Nothing and Julius Caesar can only be seen as a 10th anniversary treat for artistic director Gordon Barr.
Hedging his bets, a sold-out performance of Julius Caesar took place in the Kibble Palace while Shakespeare's finest romantic comedy played out on the familiar grassy knoll.
The Beatrice and Benedick dynamic has always been one of the Bard's sparkiest comic texts, and Barr has reinvented the pair – and added even more loaded nuances – by having an all-male duo, Bertram and Benedick (played by Robert Elkin and James Ronan, respectively). Elkin was a very memorable Benvolio in last year's Romeo and Juliet (set to tour again this Autumn) and brings the same quick wit, timing and sheer physicality to the performance. Ronan is equally adept at enlivening the pace and bringing some of Shakespeare's most biting lines to comedic fruition. The final nod to gay marriage and prolonged kiss at the close also add to the production's contemporaneous edge.
The Hero and Claudio "plot" is the Nothing amidst the central couple's Ado but some fine performances also come from the rest of the ensemble. Worthy of note was triple threat Louise McCarthy who hammed it up in her comedic roles of up-fer-it Margaret and ass-like Dogberry but took the very breath out of the warm air when she sang an incredibly atmospheric Ae Fond Kiss over the deathbed of her mistress.
Runs to July 27 (no performances on Sundays or Mondays).
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