There’s never a dull minute, costume-wise; designer Melissa Simon-Hartman employs magnificent head-dresses, bushy grass-skirts, flowing robes, a vivid imagination and a seemingly blank cheque: the amount of gold arrayed here outdoes even the Incas at their most chrysophilist.
All dressed up with nowhere exceptional to go? It’s true that some of the costumes are so outlandish – especially the daft contraptions into which clueless night-watch Dogberry and co are cast – that they upstage the actors. But, combined with bouts of dancing, and the musical accompaniment sliding between earthy funk and more ethereal sounds, the aesthetic is boldly resonant. It signals a ritualistic, intricately code-bound world alongside a stinging satirical sense of a society that delights in the surface detail but can’t spot something – female innocence, naked villainy – directly under its nose.
It’s the outrage of Hero’s framing for pre-nuptial infidelity, resulting in her vicious rejection by Claudio at the altar, that brings together the superficially scornful, innately compatible Beatrice and Benedick. If some of the warring couple’s early verbal skirmishes lack full bite, I’d say give it a few weeks. Given how recently Luke Wilson, a mere five years out of Rada, got parachuted into the role, his assurance is astonishing.
Neither he nor Akiya Henry, opposite him, look “on the shelf”, but then surely commitment-phobia can strike at any age. They complement each other. His dreadlocked bachelor is imposingly martial and drolly sceptical, while Henry lends the self-styled spinster a brash comic vivacity, beetling behind a wheelbarrow in the Act III eavesdropping scene, and achieving a loud shock laugh on that implacable demand to “Kill Claudio”.
She feels things keenly, after all, and the evening doesn’t stint on either melancholic or romantic satisfaction: Wilson slowly kneels to kiss her hand, and the pair bring matters to a richly warm close with a leisurely smooch.
Although there’s strong support, especially from Ann Ogbomo as a forthright, feminised Don Pedro, DK Fashola, rousing as the friar, and Khai Shaw making a tuneful Balthasar, some of the business is taken at too ambling a pace, pushing the running time to three hours.
Weise could lose some of the clunkier comic antics, and I wasn’t convinced we needed passing modern glosses either (“virgin” instead of “maid”, say). To be blunt, I’d also prefer a cheerier welcome from front-of house staff. But if this is the next stage for the RSC – abundant diversity mingled with feelgood inclusivity – I’d say that sigh of relief seems pretty future-proofed.
Until March 12. Tickets: 01789 331111; rsc.org.uk
