Much Ado: Directors Q&A with Alan Long

A VE Day retelling of Shakespeare’s most famous romantic comedy will be rounding off  the June 2024/25 season at Wokingham Theatre. We sat down with Director Alan Long to hear what audiences can expect from our production of Much Ado About Nothing.

Without giving too much away for those who aren’t familiar, can you tell us a bit about the story?

In many ways, it’s one of the original rom coms, featuring all the classic rom com tropes. People fall in love, there is a problem, people fall out of love, there is a genius solution and all is well. It’s your basic rom com structure! But in this case – being Shakespeare – it features not one but two romances. We have the romance of the young lovers, Claudio and Hero, who fall in love almost at first sight but their relationship goes dramatically awry. But do not fear, dear reader, all is well in the end. In contrast with this, we have the more experienced lovers of Beatrice and Benedick who have known each other for years and probably have been in love for years but don’t even realise it themselves. Thanks to various cunning plans, they eventually come – as Shakespeare puts it – into a mountain of affection.

Tell us about your vision for the play?

The action begins on VE Day, when the men of the RAF are coming home from their last bombing raid, returning for some much needed rest and relaxation after their last bit of air action. Wing Commander Don Pedro is a long-term friend of Lady Leonarta, who owns a great mansion in the Kent countryside and is inviting them all for a party to celebrate. This means a lot of music and celebration, and of course romance. 

I’ve always loved this great play and I’ve always loved the music and costumes of the 1940s. This year is the 80th anniversary of the VE Day celebrations, and as Much Ado takes place at the end of a war, it all seemed to come together. 

How have you changed the play from the original, to fit this 1940s setting?

We’ve done a few gender role reversals with some of the characters. Leonarto and Antonio of the original story have become Leonarta and Antonia, now two widows rather than two widowers. As the mothers of Beatrice and Hero, it gives a different perspective to those themes of defending their daughters’ honours. We’ve also changed the sidekick of Don John the bad guy, previously Conrad, now Connie, Don John’s moll. 

And we have Shakespeare’s normal “mechanical” comedic characters, but because it’s the Second World War, it made sense to turn the Watch into Dad’s Army, complete with all the characters we know so well. So we have Captain Mainwaring, Corporal Jones, Pike et all, and Don John is a nasty version of the black market spiv, Private Walker. But rather than being in the Dad’s Army, he’s now our bad guy, brother to Don Pedro, who has managed to avoid the fighting in any way he can and has been making money selling things on the black market. 

We’ve heard a rumour you might be featuring live music on stage?

Yes indeed. We’re using a number of Second World War songs that are being sung in a three-part harmony by our own version of the Andrews Sisters. This same trio have sung on the Wokingham stage before in our 2017 production of It’s A Wonderful Life, The Radio Play.

How are rehearsals going?

They’re going splendidly well, we feel ahead of the game and it’s shaping up well. I like the rehearsal process, playing around with ideas, getting inventive with staging for what you can do with scenes to make them funnier or more romantic. But when it all comes together, blending the acting with all the different production elements, that’s such a lovely part of the creative process. 

Finally, what can audiences expect from the show?

We have a beautiful garden set, complete with statues, working fountain and colonnade for lurking in. Hopefully it’s a lot of fun, a lot of romance, with a few silly laughs and some great music, just promising our audiences a lovely jolly time.

‘Much Ado About Nothing’ opens at Wokingham Theatre on Wednesday 16 July and runs until Saturday 26 July. Tickets are available now, but selling fast.