SOURCE: Carnegy, Patrick. Review of Much Ado about Nothing. Spectator 288, no. 9067 (18 May 2002): 58.

In the following review, Carnegy offers a positive assessment of Gregory Doran's 2002 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Much Ado about Nothing, contending that the director crafted a delicate balance between the drama's urbane comedy and sinister undertones.

The brilliant artifice of the wit in Much Ado is a dance over an abyss, and yet it needs firm ground if its steps are not to falter. What draws us to the play is delight in its exquisitely protracted verbal fencing between Beatrice and Benedick, played in Gregory Doran's new production by Harriet Walter and Nicholas le Prevost. Their sallies can bear a wealth of interpretation but need a context that will make light of the absurdities in the plotting.

Doran and his designer Stephen Brimson Lewis go the whole way with the Sicilian thing. Leonato's sun-baked terracotta...