Much Ado About Nothing (5.4.90), 1990, Royal Shakespeare Company.

Much Ado anticipates Caroline sophistication so it adapts well to Stuart elegance in costuming. Beatrice, Susan Fleetwood; Benedick, Roger Allam: Director, Bill Alexander; Designer, Kit Surrey; photographer, Donald Cooper (ahds.ac.uk/performingarts); Royal Shakespeare Theatre, April 1990.

"Kit Surrey's permanent set, which one has time to contemplate before the play begins, is an attractive formal garden which suffices for all those scenes which take place in and around Leonato's house; in due course it suavely transforms itself occasionally into the street, church or prison by the briskly contrived addition of one or two pieces of appropriate furniture." Charles Osborne, Daily Telegraph 12.4.90 Opening Date: 10 April 1990 Theatre: Royal Shakespeare Theatre.

The seventeenth-century costuming fits nicely into this formal garden setting and creates a plausible historical environment for the script. HMR