It’s electrifying when something happens on the stage of this galleried, open-air wooden theatre that causes a collective intake of breath or an explosion of laughter from the encircling audience of up to 1500 people. There are many such moments in Chelsea Walker’s energetic and distinctive staging of Shakespeare’s comedy.
Ken Nwosu and Pippa Nixon have a lively, witty chemistry as the reluctant, verbally sparring lovers Benedick and Beatrice. There’s both an undercurrent of seriousness and an attention to background detail that makes the humour of the play really sing. Since it’s a curriculum staple we’ve seen a lot of London Much Ados recently, including another at the Globe in 2024 and Jamie Lloyd’s starry Hayley Atwell/Tom Hiddlestone danceathon at Drury Lane in 2025. Walker’s version stands with the best of them.
We’re in sunny Sicily where the fashion is riviera linen and sandals. Don Pedro and his cohorts drop in on Leonato (Jonathan McGuinness), his daughter Hero (Assa Kanouté) and niece Beatrice on the way back from a war that doesn’t seem to have troubled them much. It’s probably accidental that Adam Long’s bullish, flat-vowelled, sable-haired Pedro somewhat resembles Andy Burnham: but his home region, Aragon, is northwest of Leonato’s Messina.
His lieutenant, Nwosu’s cocksure, bald and bearded London lad Benedick, had a previous flirtation with Nixon’s spirited Beatrice. Junior officer Claudio (Joshua John) is immediately smitten with Hero – once establishing she will be rich. Hierarchies of power, gender and wealth are subtly but potently felt here.
The situation of Beatrice, a smart and forceful woman in a man’s world, is made all the more plain by Hero’s passivity. The background character of servant Margaret (Matilda Bailes, excellent), a tool in the plot by Pedro’s bastard brother John to discredit Hero and destroy her marriage to Claudio, is given depth and character by Walker. One of those magic moments of collective reaction occurs when she embraces John’s henchman Borachio (Marlowe Chan-Reeves) while wearing Hero’s wedding dress: that dress becomes a sort of signifier, recurring at moments of high drama.
I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but Walker introduces an act of stunning hostility to Claudio’s rejection of Hero. And an extra, bittersweet romantic dimension to the scene where B&B finally admit they love each other, shortly before she exhorts him to kill his friend.
The ball scene, where characters wear animal heads, is very funny but also has an air of subdued Eyes Wide Shut eroticism to it. A measure of the detail in this production is that, on Claudio’s boisterous stag do, when Pedro and Leonato are in plushie animal onesies, he’s costumed as a BDSM stag. Deceived about Hero, his antlers become cuckold’s horns.
It’s possible to play Benedick as an unfunny loser, but here he and Beatrice are equals in their brisk tongues and singular self-possession. I loved the stress Nwosu lays on Benedick’s arch asides, and Nixon’s acid phrasing and occasional shrieks of hysteria.
The scenes where they are duped by their friends into falling for each other is a masterpiece of physical comedy. Initially concealed in the audience they’re gradually drawn to skulk across the stage in increasingly plain and frantic sight, respectively dumped into a flower cart and drenched with a hose.
Sami Fendall’s simple set, of a double staircase and twin doors, allows for elements of farce. Richard Katz’s policeman Dogberry is a hilariously effective clown straight out of the commedia dell’arte. But he’s also touchingly hero-worshipped – or perhaps something more – by his partner Verges (Os Leanse). Minor characters are merged to make Margaret, Borachio (or “Gazpachio” as Dogberry calls him) and the Friar (here played as a wise and dignified nun by Geraldine Alexander) stronger. The five-piece band in the gallery above the action supply an atmospheric, quietly ominous score.
The final scene, where Beatrice and Benedick finally come together, is absolutely joyful. On the night I saw it, when temperatures hit 30c and London shone in the ebbing sun, they were called back for four curtain calls – something I’ve never seen before at the Globe. A delight.
29 June to 24 October, shakespearesglobe.com
