Friday 3rd June 2011 by Will Langdale
A quick pick of what’s hot in the TicketTree.com office
Much Ado about Much
Ado
This week sees Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing opening at Wydham’s Theatre, starring David
Tennant and Catherine Tate. Director Josie Rourke has given the production a
contemporary setting, and the West End location combined with the pulling power
of ex-Doctor Who Tennant and Tate firmly places this as Shakespeare for the
masses. Reports of the crowds outside Wyndham’s certainly corroborate this!
Those that believe Shakespeare has always been for the
masses (and there’s a definite contingent of them at TicketTree) will be
likewise delighted that a more traditional version of Much Ado About Nothing
opened at the end of last week at Shakespeare’s Globe. Starring Eve Best and
Charles Edwards as Beatrice and Benedick, and directed by Jeremy Herrin, it’s
impossible not to rise to the temptation of pitting the two productions against
one another.
So who comes out on top? Well, critics seem enamoured by
aspects of both. Rourke’s contemporary adaptation seems to find praise for its
setting, with the Guardian’s Michael Billington praising the hen party scene: “one
of Shakespeare's most clumsy plot devices suddenly acquires credibility”. David
Tennant, who TicketTree very much enjoyed during his stint in Hamlet with the RSC, is well-praised,
although Tate seems to cut a little too close to the slapstick quick for most
critics; both The Times’ Libby Purves and The Daily Mail’s Quentin Letts seem
to have settled on “slouchy”.
Critical consensus is that while both are worth seeing, the
Globe’s production pips Wyndham’s to the post, although that may say more about
theatre critics than the quality of either production. Nevertheless, the
Tennant/Tate Much Ado About Nothing looks like a lot of fun, and judging by the
sheer speed of ticket sales, there’s definitely going to be a lot of people
having it!
Dirty Dancing
Old news, but we’re still sad to see Dirty Dancing leave the West End, with the last performance on July
9th. Having run for over four years, and selling out six months in
advance on its opening, we’re sorry to see it go. Don’t fret, however, as the
show begins its national tour at the Bristol Hippodrome on September 1st.
For a bit of Freudian fun Zoe Williams’ Guardian article on the open auditions
held on April 14th for the national tour is both amusing and
illuminating.
Deal of the week: Love
Never Dies late booking
Want to see Love Never Dies, the sequel to Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera? Of course you do, it’s got Ramin Karimloo in
it, who by all accounts (at least from various squealing tweeters) is a bit of
a dish. Well, we’ve now got top-priced tickets for Saturday nights massively
discounted if it’s in the next fortnight. So if you’re planning on seeing it in
a month – wait a couple of weeks, and get the same package for less! Hurrah!