Back in January, on a boring Sunday while doing the usual nothing on the internet, I got a Twitter pop-up on my screen from David Tennant’s news channel. It had just been announced that David Tennant and Catherine Tate would be performing on stage in a new production of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing.

“Interesting…”, I thought aloud to myself, which alerted my boyfriend who was sitting next to me doing stuff on his own computer. I told him about this discovery, and after about 3 minutes of discussion, we had spontaneously decided that our summer vacation would take place in London. We are both big geeks and huge fans of Doctor Who, in particular of the tenth Doctor – who as you probably all know is portrayed by the aforementioned David Tennant.

About half an hour later, our theater tickets, our hotel and our flights had been booked – all for June 2011. It was a good coincidence, because we’ve been wanting to go to London anyway pretty much ever since we have been to Cardiff, New York and Dublin together. The only thing that always worried us a little was the cost of living in London, but now that I’m here, I’m actually surprised it’s not much more expensive than Dublin – on the contrary…

Last Wednesday we finally arrived in London, and after having joined the audience for a QI recording and a touristy Thursday at the Tower of London, it was finally time to discover the West End on Friday. We picked up our tickets in the afternoon, and after walking around the area, checking a few stores & museums, etc., finally returned to Wyndham’s Theatre at 7pm and waited for the entrance to open.

Upon seating, I was a bit disappointed that our seats were so far in the back. It’s not a very big theater and you can see just fine from the stalls in the back, but it vexed me a bit that I didn’t get anything closer to the stage after booking 20 minutes after the show was announced! It really couldn’t have sold that fast… right? In the future I will DEFINITELY only book theater tickets over the phone, so I can ask for decent seats (at least if I care about getting good seats, always depends on the show/play). Booking over the phone worked perfectly for me when I booked Penn & Teller for Vegas. Aside from having 15 rows of seats in front of us, our seats were pretty good – very much in the center and no big heads in front of us. We had a great view of the entire stage, and waited as everyone was seated.

Once that was finished, the curtains lifted and the show finally opened with a wake-up call, so to speak – very loud music and one of the actresses dancing and then going over into dialogue, while Beatrice (Catherine Tate) was chilling on a beach chair next to her waiting for her turn. The play is a ‘modern’ adaptation of Shakespeare’s classic “Much Ado About Nothing”, modern in this case meaning set in the 80s in Gibraltar (according to the booklet), but it could just as well have been present-day.

After the first couple of scenes with the cast and Tate, the guy we’ve all been waiting for made his epic entrance on a beeping little golf cart decorated with Union Jacks – Benedick (David Tennant), protagonist of the play. Like his fellow male cast mates, he was dressed in a white navy uniform and wore sunglasses. How very overwhelming to see (yet another) idol in the flesh, the guy who has brought to me some of the most emotional and some of the funniest TV show moments ever. His brilliant acting skills made me laugh, made me cry and made me dazzle many times, and dazzling it is to see him in the flesh.

The rest of the cast were great actors as well, and altogether the ensemble delivered a smooth performance in front of a beautiful yet simple set. It was enclosed by round, tall, striated wooden panels with several doors, and at the center of the set were 4 big movable pillars which either served as decoration in the background or as divider between groups of people. They stood on a revolving stage and the revolving effect was very often used as part of the performance – often for comical purposes.

Photo credit: Johan Persson

Shakespearean dialogue is a bit challenging for someone who didn’t have to read it in school and combined with Tennant’s Scottish accent, it took some concentration. Tennant and Tate were both (as well as the rest of cast) were undoubtedly brilliant and delivered performances to convincing that I didn’t get a a lot of chances to think about the quality of the play and the performances.

One thing that I found a bit off-putting though was the smoking – in the first act there is A LOT of smoking on stage, by pretty much all of the characters. I’m really not convinced that it makes a creative addition to the play, if anything it’s just weird, strange and unsettling. It’s probably an 80s thing where everyone smoked like a maniac, but these days it feels just wrong. The smoking ceases in the second act, thankfully, and we are delighted with a lot of very enjoyable scenes.

Tennant and Tate in opposite-gender clothes was a particular delight, but my absolute favorite scene was probably the eavesdropping scene in which Benedick overhears his male buddies suggesting that Beatrice has a thing for him. It takes a little bit of its inspiration from slapstick, but Tennant does it so perfectly that the entire theater was screaming with laughter. Beatrice’s counter-eavesdropping scene in which she overhears her female friends, for the most part from up in the air, is likewise hilarious.

The liberties the production takes has been used in very creative ways. Having Darth Vader and Princess Leia at a costume ball is definitely funnier that period masks and dresses. Light, sound and music were also used to enhance the atmosphere is fitting ways. A fun modification was the use of an 80s toy keyboard instead of a conventional instrument to conduct a love poem, the kind of keyboard which comes with pre-recorded songs which you can either just listen to or play along to. I had one of those which played Greensleeves (as in the play) and Auld Long Syne, but alas, I don’t know where it is nowadays.

I’ve been to Broadway musicals (The Producers, Wicked), stage shows and a few low budget theater productions, but this was my first Shakespeare play and my first-ever British play. Shakespeare seems to be the ultimate thing among actors in the UK and I get the impression nobody takes an actor seriously unless he’s been in several Shakespeare plays. That’s a difference to most American actors, a lot of which probably haven’t seen stage action. It also speaks for the higher quality of British acting – 90% of the great actors I can think of are British. True talent seems to show itself on stage – the theater is without a doubt way more demanding than film or TV acting. I can’t even imagine how hard it must be to memorize 2 hours of Shakespearean dialog and the physical performance on top of that.

It’s incredibly impressive to observe such talent on a stage for two hours, and David Tennant was the undisputed shining star of the play, closely followed by Catherine Tate, Jonathan Coy (Leonato) and Tome Bateman (Claudio). Tennant’s an amazing actor and was supported by a fantastic cast. I really hope he will continue to indulge in his love for performing on stage in the future, so I have another excuse for going to London. It was obvious that he really does love the stage and his fans, judging by the way he was gleaming and shining and radiating after the play during the final applause-turned-standing-ovation, after which he only very reluctantly left the stage for the last time.

Attending the play also opened my eyes to the London West End, something I never really gave much thought to – I have the feeling there are always great plays with great actors, even famous ones, running here. If the next play isn’t a Tennant one, maybe it’ll be something else?! I would love to go to the theater more often, but since it’s so incredibly bad in Germany, going to the West End (or Broadway, though that’s a bit expensive to get to) seems like a tempting option. It’s been my first time to London, but definitely not my last. I love this city and what it has to offer, it’s very much like New York but with it’s own unique old-worldish charm.