Keep an eye on Robert Jack’s left hand. When the actor strides on with suave confidence as Benedick in Shakespeare’s romcom, it is at ease by his side. The second he becomes unsettled, as word gets round that Emily Winter’s Beatrice may have her sights on him, his hand is all aflutter. It seeks purchase on his hip, then fails and flits up to his chin. No joy there, so on to the tip of his head and down again. It never rests. This master of repartee is undone. He is a mess of twitches, hesitations and double takes. He makes it very funny.
Winter doesn’t go to quite the same extremes, partly because early on she is too eager to please to be convincingly independent. But she parallels his progress from control to chaos – with occasional deep breaths of sanity – to seem every bit his equal. Set against the courtly love complications of Marli Siu’s Hero and Ewan Somers’s Claudio, theirs is a romance worth believing in. Neither gives ground except on their own terms, yet both are as foolish in love as the rest of us.
Irene Macdougall brings the same qualities of lucidity and intelligence to directing she has always brought to acting. On Ken Harrison’s set of sun-baked Mediterranean tiles, she presents an untricksy production characterised by its clarity, pace and healthy awareness of the audience. There are no weak links in her 12-strong cast, just a happy ensemble and, for all the play’s dark undercurrents, a happier ending.
• At Dundee Rep until 25 June. Box office: 01382 223530.
