Last Updated on October 22, 2025
A Euphoric Much Ado at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane
5.0 out of 5.0 starsIt’s 67 years since any of Shakespeare’s plays have been performed at Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and now director Jamie Lloyd’s repertory company have staged two back-to-back. Hollywood legend Sigourney Weaver picked up poor reviews for her gender-swapping Prospero in The Tempest, but tonight is the press night for Tom Hiddleston (Loki, The Night Manager) and Hayley Atwell (Mission Impossible, Dr Strange, The Avengers), both Jamie Lloyd alumni, who exploded onto the stage in an unashamedly populist 90s club culture take on Much Ado About Nothing.
Shakespeare’s comedy, Much Ado About Nothing is set in Messina, Italy with the story revolving around two romantic pairings and a series of deceptions. Don Pedro and his soldiers, including Claudio and Benedick, bound onto the stage to the soundtrack of the Beastie Boys’ Fight For Your Right (To Party), arriving at the home of Leonato, the governor of Messina. Claudio falls in love with Leonato’s daughter, Hero, while Benedick and Beatrice (Leonato’s niece) engage in a “merry war” of witty banter. Don Pedro helps Claudio woo Hero, and they become engaged. Meanwhile, Don Pedro and his friends devise a plan to make Benedick and Beatrice fall in love by tricking them into believing that each secretly loves the other. The plan works, however, Don John, Don Pedro’s illegitimate brother, plots to ruin Claudio and Hero’s relationship. He arranges for Claudio to witness a staged scene that appears to show Hero being unfaithful. At the wedding, Claudio publicly shames Hero, who faints and is believed dead. The drama then unfolds with happy endings all round.
Jamie Lloyd’s production of Much Ado About Nothing has all the pzazz of a modern West End musical with the benefit of the Bard’s extraordinary words. Some scenes have been cut but the narrative scaffolding is still intact. The production has a queer aesthetic with lots of double entendres, camp costuming and gay characterisations. In typical Lloyd style, the stage is nearly bare, filled by designer Soutra Gilmour with a few plastic chairs and a huge inflatable pink heart. Showers of pink confetti rain down until the actors are ankle-deep. There is a banging 90’s club soundtrack with some nifty choreography by Fabian Aloise and all the actors are amplified when speaking which adds to the ‘musical’ feel. I wasn’t sure about this at first but soon got used to it with the more introspective scenes being spoken more naturalistically than would be necessary to fill the cavernous Theatre Royal. Lloyd manages the neat trick of having the actors honour the language whilst bringing a contemporary cadence to its delivery. This makes the language very accessible.
If the first half of Much Ado is played for pop culture kicks with nods to 90s boyband moments, cardboard cutouts of the leads in their Marvel superhero guises, and the Masked Singer, the second half sees a palpable change of gear. Tom Hiddleston is Benedick in a sparkly belt, and Hayley Atwell is Beatrice and they make a fine pair of squabbling lovers (“My dear lady disdain”). Atwell has a glorious voice, owning Beatrice’s sharp wit and her frustration at her sense of disempowerment whilst Hiddleston brings a geeky physicality to the role. He is constantly cutting shapes, whipping his shirt off or striking poses. The pair are obviously having fun with this production; but as the story becomes more serious, so does the acting. The joking around is ditched and suddenly both the leads exude star power bringing an intensity and depth to their interactions that I wasn’t expecting. I’d love to see the two of them handle Macbeth and Lady Macbeth.
Mara Huf plays the wronged Hero, strutting her stuff in lilac hotpants as a cross between Harley Quinn and Nicole Scherzinger; bursting into life with righteous anger as she faces down her male accusers including her betrothed Claudio and her father, but also bringing a sense of burgeoning teenage sexual excitement to the stage. James Phoon’s Claudio in a sparkly silver outfit is naïve and puppyish at the outset but impresses as the character transitions through a jealous rage and then mortification as the reality of the situation sinks in.
In the world of the play, the character of Don Pedro owns all of the power. Gerald Kyd plays The Don as a rakish Ibiza club owner, a playboy in pink, balancing his entitlement with his emotional distress at his own loneliness. Forbes Masson as Leonato, Hero’s father, is an excitable Scot, buffeted by the emotional whirlwind surrounding him whilst trying to manage his attraction to Phillip Olagoke’s Friar Francis who brings a sense of fun to the normally po-faced role.
Tim Steed as Don John has a lovely line in closeted oleaginous reticence, looking for revenge for his compromised status as the bastard brother. He also manages a mean moonwalk. Don John’s sidekick and the instrument for managing Hero’s downfall is Mika Onyx Johnson’s Borachio. Decked out in a white fur coat he starts of as a street hustler, bringing a hip-hop flow as well as some breakdancing moves to the stage.
Non-binary actor Mason Alexander Park, fresh from a triumphant Ariel in The Tempest, plays Hero’s maid Margaret in pink trousers with a fur trim. They deliver a series of songs as a Shakespearean Olly Alexander in a soulful baritone and falsetto to link the action.
With a company that combines big names with a strong core of returning actors, Jamie Lloyd has a house style that isn’t going to work for every production. But after his triumphant Sunset Boulevard and now this high-octane and zeitgeisty Much Ado, hopes will be high for his upcoming reworking of Evita at The London Palladium.
Much Ado About Nothing
Until 5 April 2025
Theatre Royal Drury Lane,
Catherine Street,
London
WC2B 5JF
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