SOURCE: Young, Toby. “Unapologetic Crowd-Pleaser.” Spectator 289, no. 9080 (17 August 2002): 45-6.

In the following review, Young declares he was completely won over by the Royal Shakespeare Company's 2002 production of Much Ado about Nothing, set in Mussolini's Italy.

During the interval of Much Ado About Nothing, the RSC's summer block-buster, I sidled up to Ned Sherrin in the bar and started peppering him with questions. Why does Don John hate his brother? What's the back story? And how does Don John hope to get his revenge on his brother by sabotaging the marriage of Hero and Claudio?

“I know your game,” said the presenter of Loose Ends. “You want to find out how it ends so you can leave without having to sit through the second half.”

If he'd said this to me at either of the other plays I saw last week he would have been right, but in this...