Tom Hiddleston is on winning bum-wiggling form in Much Ado About Nothing
Even a many-tentacled alien who was blissfully ignorant of concepts like celebrity casting would surely – if beamed into the confines of Theatre Royal Drury Lane – get the impression that Tom Hiddleston is something of a big deal in these quarters. With a winning air of knowing smugness, he quips, vamps and wiggles his bum (quite a lot) through the role of Benedick in Jamie Lloyd's calculatedly naff, Noughties pop-ballad-filled reimagining of Much Ado About Nothing. His lover? Fellow Marvel star Hayley Atwell as Beatrice, who attempts to resist charms that large sections of the audience clearly can't.
The previous instalment of Lloyd's hubristic season of West End Shakespeares was a turgid, over-serious The Tempest. This follow-up is the opposite, taking an aggressively flip approach to one of Shakespeare's stranger, more challenging comedies. It's a bit wedding disco, a bit reality telly song contest, a bit Mum and Dad's big night out on the town now the kids are old enough to clean up their own Weetabix.
Lloyd's production bravely ditches the play's comic subplot and sidelines the younger nominal romantic leads Hero (Mara Huf) and Claudio (James Phoon) even more than is traditional, in favour of the more fun (and, here, far more famous) Beatrice and Benedick, who have a huge amount of fun with their banter-filled romance. Bendick declares himself "certain I am loved of all ladies", with Hiddleston teasingly holding an ear out to the audience so they can supply the whoops of approval Beatrice won't give him. He throws everything at the part, breakdancing, unbuttoning his shirt, and even delivering an appalling rendition of a Backstreet Boys song. It's an an oddly poignant expression of the desperation of unrequited love, touches of sadness under the self-depreciation.
Opposite him, Atwell's more brittle, playing up to her reputation as a dancing gadfly: so it's arresting when she finally loses control, her suppressed rage escaping in a visceral, half-hysterical "I'd eat his heart in a marketplace".
You get the sense that she refuses to admit she likes Benedick – let alone settle down with him – both because she fears vulnerability, and because love is just a bit cringe: here, Soutra Gilmour fantastically ballsy design fills the stage with a gigantic, floor-to-ceiling inflatable love heart while seemingly-neverending drifts of pink confetti speckle the air around them. Mason Alexander Park sings cheesy love songs between scenes, their rich voice bringing complex flavours to these sugar-sweet melodies.
This production is all about Beatrice and Benedict, so when the focus shifts to Hero and Claudio in the second act, this hedonistic love fest inevitably falls a little flat. It feels like there could be a little more boldness here. Why scrap this play's comic subplot and chuck out all set apart from a 15ft high inflatable heart and several truckloads of pink confetti – without doing more to make sense of this seemingly permissive crew's sudden life-or-death obsession with Hero's maidenhead? Still, Huf plays her part with a welcome sexual agency, flirting with the audience and giving her lover (a subtly conflicted Phoon) a furious push before she takes him back.
Here, as in life, no amount of self-awareness and knowingness can protect you from big, raw, vulnerable emotions. Fluffy though his staging might look, Lloyd strips the frills from this story to reveal the push and pull of rejection and reconciliation at its heart.
