Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Like many a football match, Much Ado About Nothing is a play of two contrasting halves. At first, it’s all smooth moves, nimble footwork and some crafty team manoeuvres to bring longtime sparring partners Beatrice and Benedick to admit their true feelings. And then — bam! — serious foul play and the mood switches in an instant. So it makes perfect sense for director Michael Longhurst to set his new RSC production in the high-octane world of professional football.Here, the audience take their seats to the indistinct chants of an unseen crowd, delirious following victory for Messina FC. The men return, not from battle, but from conquest on the pitch, among them Don Pedro the team manager and Claudio the man of the match, having scored a crucial last-minute goal. Giddy on glory, they roll out of the stadium, visible at the back of Jon Bausor’s set, and into a media and management maelstrom. Among the throng are Peter Forbes’s affluent Leonato (here the owner of the club), his sweet daughter Hero (Eleanor Worthington-Cox), with whom Daniel Adeosun’s upright, naive Claudio falls spectacularly in love, and Freema Agyeman’s Beatrice, a sharp-tongued sports commentator.It’s a smart concept that pitches Shakespeare’s bittersweet comedy into a contemporary setting, where celebrities enjoy glossy lifestyles but are subject to instant online judgment. Claudio’s professed devotion to Hero and his hideous public rejection become even more extreme, with every move livestreamed on countless cameras and phones, and social media snapping up the chance to shame Hero (abusive comments are projected around the auditorium). The images that fool Claudio into thinking his sweetheart unfaithful are digitally altered. Much of this makes sense, highlighting how, four centuries on, there’s still a strong streak of misogyny in public life and how rapidly that asserts itself in the world of sport. Adeosun and Worthington-Cox convince as achingly inexperienced young people caught up in a world that ill-prepares them for life.The setting likewise supports those who find themselves on the edges of all the hoopla. Nick Blood’s funny, likeable Benedick deploys laddish banter as armour. His relief, when he can abandon it, is palpable: he emerges, beaming with delight from the onstage swimming pool where he has dived to avoid detection while eavesdropping on his friends. Agyeman’s sharp put-downs suggest Beatrice is a woman for whom determined independence has become a brittle habit.But there is an awkwardness to the evening — a sense of straining for effect. In places, it’s as if the concept is wearing the drama, rather than the other way around. Characters get lost and some of the comedy is over-emphatic, feeling staged rather than a natural consequence of the characters’ situations (Beatrice hiding behind a statue in a compromising position being a case in point). In football parlance, there are too many heavy touches, with the result that you notice the effort, rather than the result. Meanwhile that onstage pool, fun as it is, forces much of the action upstage, distancing the performances and making audibility an issue.A great game plan, flashes of brilliance and some cracking performances. But this feels like one of those matches with plenty of shots on target and where all the players work hard yet the result proves elusive.★★★☆☆To May 24, rsc.org.uk
