Lucy Phelps as Beatrice and Ralph David as Benedick
Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre 2022
Photo: Manuel Harlan
048 – Much Ado About Nothing, by William Shakespeare
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The curtain rises on the house of Leonato, governor of the city of Messina in Sicily. A messenger has arrived with the news that war has ended and that the local soldiers will be returning safely home. Celebrations will follow and the men and women will turn their thoughts from war to romance. Among them the young officer Claudio, who has set his heart on Leonato’s daughter Hero. But there are two among the courtly suitors who do not subscribe to the conventions of romance. Hero’s cousin, Beatrice, and Claudio’s comrade-in-arms, Benedick, are conjoined by their shared determination to avoid the yolk of marriage and by their mutual antipathy. However both of these couples will find that the course of love does not run predictably in Shakespeare’s mature romantic comedy Much Ado About Nothing.
The play is one of Shakespeare’s most popular, primarily for the “merry war” of wits between Beatrice and Benedick, whose fiery sparring and ultimate reconciliation are the prototype for centuries of rom com. But alongside their brilliant comic partnership, there is also a darker story, of misogyny and betrayal, that gives the play a more complex and challenging character.
I am joined today to review this romantic rollercoaster by Lucy Bailey, the director of the joyous production that is currently running at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in London.
Lucy Bailey
Lucy Bailey’s wide ranging work as a director comprises many acclaimed productions, including a number of Shakespeare plays at the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Globe, and the Theatre Royal Bath, the latter with a production of King Lear starring David Haig. She is responsible for the joyous production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Globe in the summer of 2022, which set the play in northern Italy in the last days of World War II. Her renditions of Titus Andronicus and Macbeth at the Globe were both notorious and memorable for their powerful graphic imagery.
Among her other credits, Lucy has also directed touring productions of Gaslight, The Graduate, Dial ‘M’ for Murder, and The Importance of Being Earnest. On a different note, Lucy has a particular affinity for Agatha Christie. She has directed Love from a Stranger, and enjoyed both critical acclaim and huge popular success with her production of Witness for the Prosecution, which in a masterstroke she staged in the grand chamber of County Hall in London, a fitting setting for the classic courtroom drama.
As testimony to her versatility, in 2020 she directed David Mamet’s contentious play Oleanna at the Theatre Royal Bath, which was the subject of our conversation together in episode 16 of the podcast. Listen here.
The Footnotes to our episode on Much Ado About Nothing include more on the meaning of the title, the rhetoric in play in the verbal tennis of the dialogue, and the changing perception of Beatrice through the ages.
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113 – Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Published 24th August
Tom Stoppard’s 1993 play, Arcadia is viewed by many as his finest play, renowned for the breadth of its intellectual interrogations and its formal invention. The play is a structural masterpiece of ideas, as well as a teasing detective story, joyous comedy, and emotionally rich exploration of love and loss.
As we record this episode a wonderful new production of Arcadia is playing at the Duke of York’s theatre in London’s West End, following its acclaimed run at the Old Vic theatre earlier this year. I am delighted to share the challenge and the pleasure of exploring Stoppard’s dazzling drama with the director of the new production, Carrie Cracknell.
112 – Glengarry Glen Ross by David Mamet
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David Mamet’s modern American classic, Glengarry Glen Ross, is a blistering commentary on the cut-throat reality of the American dream, and its poisonous impact on those who have bought into the myth and machismo of that dream. The play had its world premiere in the small Cottesloe theatre at the National Theatre in London in September 1983, and was first performed in New York the following year, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Mamet also wrote the extended screenplay for the star-studded 1992 film version.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play was playing at the Old Vic theatre in London, with an all-female cast. This is a particularly provocative idea, because one of the primary themes of this play is masculine identity, and the salesmen in this Chicago office do not hold back in their display of machismo.
To explore Mamet’s unflinching slice of 1980s dog-eat-dog capitalism, I am joined by arts journalist Mark Lawson.
111 – The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht
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Bertolt Brecht’s ‘gangster spectacle’, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui, is both an exuberant and funny piece of theatre, and a chillingly topical political satire. Set in the 1930s Chicago of Al Capone, Brecht presents a parody of the rise of Hitler through the character of the gangster Arturo Ui. The play is a universal cry for vigilance against the rise of unscrupulous, populist leaders who threaten democratic societies and global peace.
As we recorded this episode a new production of the play by the Royal Shakespeare Company was playing in Stratford-upon-Avon, starring Mark Gatiss as the title character.
I am delighted to be joined by both the show’s translator, playwright Stephen Sharkey, and by Brecht scholar, Professor Tom Kuhn, to guide us through Brecht’s political parody.
What a joy and a privilege to work on this production.