My second show at the Rose Theatre in Kidderminster in 2020, and another performed by the wonderful Nonentities amateur theatre group. Yes that's right, a Shakespeare play performed by an amateur theatre group. It is true to say that many amateur groups would shy away from Shakespeare, and in many cases that is a good thing. I saw an amateur production of a 1 hour Henry VI last year which was the worst thing I've ever seen on stage. However, I had seen the Nonentities production of Macbeth a few years ago which was excellent and the Nonentities were one of the amateur groups used by the RSC for their Midsummer Night's Dream : A Play for the Nation production back in 2016, so I felt I was in safe hands. I did however do a stupid thing and accidentally watched the 2015 production of Much Ado by the RSC on DVD again last week, having forgotten that was the play I was watching this week. I was a bit worried I would be comparing the RSC production to this all night, which I did to some extent, but actually the Rose production, directed by Jen Eglinton, faired quite well against the stiff competition.
The Nonentities group had chosen to set their play in Italy, just after the second World War, with the Italian soldiers returning from fighting at the front to the villa of Leonata.
The set was beautiful, very well constructed to look like an Italianate villa with a courtyard. Unfortunately I wasn't able to take any photos of the lovely set as the curtains were closed upon entrance to the stalls.
Acting was very good on the whole, with pretty much the whole cast remembering their lines and where their should be. A problem sometimes with Shakespeare is that actors spend so much effort remembering lines that they forget to act the lines. Here however I am happy to say that wasn't the case with some really excellent performances. It's always nice to see when actors still act when they are in the background, and here they were a lot of crowd scenes which were very well done. Standout performances were Richard Taylor and Tori Wakeman as Benedick and Beatrice. I've seen them both a few times in other plays and they always excel. Pat Gale put in a wonderfully funny performance as Dogberry, and Beth Grainger, who I don't think I've seen perform before, was stunning as Hero. John Spencer was wonderfully menacing as Don John and Tom Rees play a very regal Don Pedro. Jess Schneider has been putting in some very good performances over the last year and here was very good again as Margaret. Chris Kay played Claudio with just the right amounts of goodness and villainy so that you both like him and hate him.
So another triumph at the Rose, a great fun Shakespeare play very well done. The play is fairly easy to follow if you're not used to Shakespeare. The plot is fairly simple and the language in this one is quite easy to understand.
It's on until Saturday so grab a ticket if you can from their website here : http://www.rosetheatre.co.uk/
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