SOURCE: Hemming, Sarah. Review of Much Ado about Nothing. Financial Times (8 August 2002): 18.

In the following review of the 2002 Royal Shakespeare Company production of Much Ado about Nothing directed by Gregory Doran, Hemming contends that Doran's interpretation was unable to adequately link the dark and comic aspects of Shakespeare's drama.

Even Shakespeare's sunniest comedies have dark shadows. In Much Ado About Nothing the focus is on Beatrice and Benedick, the two sceptics whose romance is conducted through denial. But equally important is the contrasting love affair of Claudio and Hero, during which Claudio cruelly and publicly jilts Hero at the altar. What price love here? Little wonder Beatrice and Benedick are so suspicious of it. Gregory Doran's RSC production astutely aims to illuminate this context by setting the play not in 16th-century Messina, but in the Sicily of 1936—the returning soldiers have just conducted Mussolini's campaign in Ethiopia. In...