IT is usually a jukebox audience that is encouraged to “dance in the hallway”. In Jamie Lloyd’s 1990s Clubland Twist in Shakespeare, the UShers do so before the curtain goes up. This is a sign of things to come, along with the throwback soundtrack and the Giddy Swirl of Disco lights.
Taylor Dayne said this in my heart starting with the proceedings and a pink confetti shower. It is a completely unique and absolutely amazing concept again, turning Shakespeare’s comedy, which is narrowly kept tragedy, at an old school party of the school cum modern Romcom.
More musical than play, song and dance interludes are sometimes big-from boys to Deee-Lite boys and backstreet. The dated sound can be a nod to the older couple, Beatrice and Benedick, played by Hayley Atwell and Tom Hiddleston, who are Singleton veterans before -to confess their love for each one.
Hiddleston and Atwell have a sparring chemistry that is as bright as modern-day costumes (all rose spangles, gold shimmer and sequins). You can see the sparks coming out of them in their “Merry War”, which is that -fuel by antagonistic dueling but suddenly sank into honesty and intensity.
Each other element works next to them, with a drink (and medicine?) Added hedonism to the stage without compromising Shakespeare’s verse.
Most of the cast here worked on Lloyd’s previous West End Show, The Tempest, with Mara Huf and James Phoon, who again played married as heroes and Claudio, along with a Fey Tim Steed as Don John, and many something else. That show was identified with most negative reviews. It is like the revenge of the Tempest in its contagious -truly funny, romantic and that is a splendid subplot involving a tedious dogberry.
It has the same creative group on the Set of Designer, Soutra Gilmour (carrying a similar dark depth around the stage), illuminating Jon Clark (disco lights galore) and the sound of Ben and Max Ringham. The director of motion, Fabian Aloise, creates lovely dancing dancing and the overall effect combines with the hallucination of hallucinations.
Mason Alexander Park, who stole the show as a lugubriious Ariel at The Tempest, played hero’s attendant Margaret, but they were key to the soundtrack of playing along with their gorgeous singing joint.
The masquerade ball features plushy headdresses (from Tweety Pie to a mini-octopus); They are silly and funny but come back by doing to look more disturbing psychedelic – like an acid trip gone.
The switch from the light to the dark, when the hero was falsely accused of disloyalty on Claudio’s wedding day, was that it was a great accuracy of tone. It brings dangerous anger, and where the scene usually shows the dated gender politics of gaming – a man who asks a woman’s virtue and condemns her to metaphoric death – the hero does not lose his power and The reunion of the couple seems to be real and happy.
The visible stage mechanics – from lights to bare walls and a row of chairs for actors to sit when they do not perform – are customs features in Lloyd’s show here: they go down to perform In We but In With us, we are in contact with the eye, we are taught as they speak love and love.
There is also a moment of meta, in the romance of Beatrice and Benedick when they encounter cardboard cut-outs of each of each other’s superheroes (both starred in the Hollywood franchise). Benedick’s worship of the Atwell captain Carter’s cardboard Carter’s cardboard while Beatrice’s dance suggests Hiddleston’s Loki.
The latter is a certain god of bullshit here, drawing the difficult physical comedy that Confetti involves in the scene of avoidance when he is in love with his love, and pulled out some funny dance motions ( Atwell also pulled out). Both twisted and flirted with the audience without deviation from Shakespeare’s text “I love all women,” Hiddleston said and the auditorium growled in confirmation.
Lloyd himself was like a God of error in building this party of color -gross sadness. You need to be a stone god who will not be encouraged by the joy of winter. It was an amazing thing that really matter, and that was my conclusion.
