Much Ado About Nothing, 1976, Royal Shakespeare Company.

Much Ado About Nothing: Director, John Barton; Designer, John Napier; Photographer, Tom Holte (ahds.ac.uk/performingarts); Royal Shakespeare Company, April 1976.

"The play has been lifted bodily into mid-nineteenth century India...just as the sons of the Empire were sent into the colonies to 'find themselves' a century ago, so we now send our theatrical classics there in hope of finding them again. And it works: the timbered balconies of John Napier's permanent Stratford setting, used last week for the declaration of Juliet's love, now become places to hang awnings and sun-shades out in the midday sun." Sheridan Morley, Punch 21.4.76

The Indian watchmen, trying to follow the alien procedures of the British Raj, provide a plausible analogue to the procedural confusion of Elizabethan policemen. HMR Opening Date: 5 April 1976. Theatre: Royal Shakespeare Company