Sweet things are made of this

Creation Theatre Company’s welcome return to outdoor summer Shakespeare brings Helen Tennison’s vibrant production of Much Ado About Nothing to the South Oxford Adventure Playground, in a co-production with St Albans’ OVO theatre company.

Performed around, and on, a large wooden climbing area, the setting enables the magical castle-like environment to suggest the military buildings in the drama.

Four of Creation’s repertory company perform in the show, led by Anna Tolputt’s elfin Benedick. It’s not a gender-swap; the crop-haired Tolputt is meant to be male. A natural comedian, she’s excellent in bringing out the comedy in the role, not least when hiding in a bright yellow dustbin during the scene when her friends pretending not to hear her friends discuss how much Beatrice loves him.

Tolputt is well matched, playing opposite to Emily Woodward’s cutesy Beatrice. Woodward gamely ignores her soaked clothes during the first half’s constant downpour.

Woodward creates a sweet, trusting heroine who goes into her relationship with Benedick with her eyes wide open once she is secure in knowing Benedick loves her. Their constant denials of affection clearly signal that they are destined for each other.

However, Beatrice’s cousin Hero (Brianna Douglas) faces a rockier future in her proposed marriage to Benedick’s army friend Claudio (Herb Cuanalo) after she is cruelly treated by her lover on her wedding day.

Claudio believes the plot of the evil Don John (Nicholas Ormond), who discredits his enemy Claudio by framing Hero for sleeping around before the marriage.

While the central plotlines are intensely serious, there’s a joyful playfulness in this eighties-set show with the cast dancing or singing to a succession of pop hits, more Chris de Burgh than Aerosmith and ACDC, as Benedick quips at one point.

Claudio and Hero’s two wedding ceremonies are deliriously officiated by an Elvis impersonator (Lewis Chandler) as if Las Vegas has been transported into Messina. The policeman Dogberry and his deputy Verges, with Chandler and Douglas camping it up with comedy moustaches, prancing around to the theme tune of The Bill, enliven the interval with their antics, their lines spoken through a loudhailer.

Thoroughly recommended.

JON LEWIS