Much Ado About Nothing lives or dies on the chemistry of its two leads, and the Globe’s latest production is fortunate to have Pippa Nixon and Ken Nwosu at its centre.
Nixon delivers sardonic wit with precision while Nwosu plays Benedick with a comic ease that feels entirely natural and unforced.
The production is staged in modern dress but otherwise makes few concessions to contemporary updating, which speaks well of Shakespeare’s enduring comic instincts.
The dialogue alone is enough to reduce the Globe’s audience to hysterics more than four centuries after the play was first performed, a remarkable testament to its staying power.
Nwosu is particularly adept at translating seventeenth-century quips into something that lands with genuine force for a modern crowd.
When his Benedick lamented to the audience “shall I never see a bachelor of three-score again?”, the line drew an enthusiastic response from even the youngest theatregoers present.
The Globe itself serves as the set, and the cast makes full and imaginative use of its open, expansive architecture throughout the performance.
Nixon’s Beatrice delivers her sharpest barbs while hanging from the lower gallery, and Nwosu weaves through the audience during one memorable scene, stealing programmes to use as cover while hiding from Claudio, Leonato, and Don Pedro.
The production does stumble when it attempts to balance its broad comedy against the play’s darker dramatic moments, with the tonal shift proving jarring rather than affecting.
Joshua John’s Claudio lurches from romcom lover-boy to frenzied intensity, brutally slamming Hero’s face into the wedding cake and later rolling in her grave when he believes her dead.
These scenes arrive so swiftly after moments of high camp silliness that they fail to land with the emotional weight they require.
At one point, Claudio leads a glittering ensemble dressed in sunglasses and stepping in formation before the story pivots sharply into grief.
The masquerade sequence sees the cast appear in formal wear with oversized animal heads, the symbolism kept deliberately simple, with a lamb for Hero and a snake for Don John.
The production occasionally tilts into pantomime territory, and the audience responds in kind, booing Don John enthusiastically during the closing scene.
What this Globe production sacrifices in dramatic shade, however, it more than compensates for with warmth, laughter, and a genuinely capable and committed cast ensemble.
Much Ado About Nothing continues at Shakespeare’s Globe until 24 October.