A Sheffield Theatres and Ramps on the Moon production
To be everything to everyone all in the same moment is a big and very busy ambition! Ramps on the Moon, a company working with six collaborating theatres around the land, aim for just that. Foremost pioneers in incorporating creative audio description, signing and captions for their audiences, they also bring together onstage a full mix of deaf, neuro-diverse, disabled and non-disabled performers and interpreters. Add in gender swaps, speakers and signers who switch roles with a resultant slight paraphrasing of text, plus a variety of regional accents, and – even in the absence of simultaneous interpretations into Greek, Finnish and Klingon – there could be a danger of a Jack-of-All-Trades information overload for anyone not focused solely on accessing the main aspect that caters for their own particular needs!
This collaboration with Sheffield theatres stages the Company’s first Shakespeare play. Heaped with Shakespearean playfulness and silliness, Much Ado is a rom-com, full of disguises, trickery and deception with a few more serious characters and turns of events thrown in and a frisson of evil to boot. This production certainly makes the most of the comedy, working in further silliness and bawdy innuendo whenever possible (sometimes overlaboured) and adding in odd phrases like “It’s a bit top shelf!” which raises a big, modern laugh. Less appropriately, so does the dark command, “Kill Claudio”, which is very discombobulating!
In a less frantic second half, some characters develop to become more touching, engaging and real, adding a more satisfying side. Benjamin Wilson as Borachio, for instance, realising the error of his drunken ways, repents in fine earnest, while Benedick (Guy Rhys) and Beatrice (Daneka Etchells) mellow into calmer mode once their spiky, tetchy antagonism has been quelled by love. The audience enjoys Caroline Parker’s (Mistress) Dogberry: with a shock of mad, blonde hair, pink suit and small-stepped gait she makes a fine job of being an ass with camp comedy partner Verges (Lee Farrell) smiling beside her all the way. Dan Parr is sturdy as Don Pedro and Gerard McDermott as host Leonato, with wife Antonia (Karina Jones) replacing brother Antonio; Taku Mutero’s Claudio is endearing at times, but reducing his comedy and limpness somewhat could make him a better contrast as a serious, traditional-style straight-man hero, worthy of the love of traditionally lovely, noble, gentle Hero (Claire Wetherall). Fatima Niemogha’s Donna Joanna (Don John as was) might benefit from deepening her wicked vibes to more dastardly proportions, and what a shame Richard P. Peralta is ever thwarted in his singing as fine-voiced Friar Francis!
Audio described at the outset, the set and props are neat and handsome, the main focus on a modern, upmarket wooden, glass-fronted cabin at the back, set with long dining table and flanked by tall silver birch trunks and strings of light-bulbs. Colourful costumes range from smart casual to less smart casual, bathrobes or hoe-down cowboy outfits appearing as required (or not!) along with saxophone, guitar and other unexpected items like wooden massage beds – a clever device for a masseur to overhear conversations without seeming to be seen. Aye, there’s the rub!
It’s pretty exhausting to watch (and with some accents and deliveries sometimes rushed, gobbled or mumbled, there’s extra caption reading to do) but there’s certainly plenty of enthusiastic, entertaining fun and ado to be had in this Much Ado About Nothing
Eileen Caiger Gray
The show plays at The Crucible until Sept 24th and then travels to Leeds, Birmingham, Nottingham, Ipswich, Stratford East and Salisbury. For more information follow this link.
