After the success of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, when I was next in London with the children, I was keen to try again, and find another Shakespearean play to take my son to. However, as this was March, the play on offer at the Globe was Cymbeline, which didn’t seem quite suitable for an 11 year old. So I looked around, and decided to splash out with a trip to Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; a play that I’ve always liked.
As usual, we did the prep. This time there was a film to help us, so I sat him down in front of Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation, with Emma Thompson as Beatrice, and Branagh himself as Benedick. He soon got the hang of the story, and also some of the humour, as the characters tricked Beatrice and Benedick into falling in love. And although the play has a darker mid-section, the end is joyful. We also tried reading some of the play together ourselves, taking turns with the parts at bedtime: I bought two copies of the text so we could read it aloud together. I do find that getting your tongue around the words brings them to life, so although we didn’t read all of it, it was a good way into the text and the language.
What I hadn’t realised when I booked, was that the part of Benedick in the production we were to see was played by Tom Hiddleston – who I was quickly informed is Loki – and Beatrice by Hayley Atwell (Agent Peggy Carter/Captain Carter). My son, a Marvel fan, was beside himself. The production was great fun – pink, loud, covered in glitter and feathers and full of dance routines and songs – and Hiddleston was wry and funny and altogether excellent as Benedick. The second the applause began at the end, we were out of our seats and off to join the queue by the Stage Door. After a cold wait we were rewarded with the cast – including Hiddleston and Atwell – coming down the row of theatregoers and signing programmes. The result – my son’s prized possession. And hopefully the realisation that going to see Shakespeare with Mummy is a good idea.
After that, a lull, until, something on a whim, a couple of weeks ago, I asked my daughter, 8½ years, if she’d like to go to see the student production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They had a Saturday matinee show, and her brother was at a birthday party, so it seemed a good opportunity for us to go to the theatre together. She had seen half of the play – in a sadly truncated outdoor production last summer which I wrote about here – and was keen to see the whole thing.
We ran over the story again, and the programme had a helpful plot summary including spoilers, so I didn’t have to explain much as the play unfolded. It was a fun, joyous production; the audience members in the row in front of us found everything hilarious and laughed loudly throughout, which seemed to help my daughter find the humour in the antics onstage. Their laughter seemed to give her permission to laugh too, so I was grateful for their enthusiasm. I was aware that the audience and players were all closer to my daughter’s age than mine, and it was lovely to see the actors coming into the theatre to join the audience after the show and be greeted and congratulated by friends and family. Some of them will satisfy their thirst for theatre at college; others will go on to act on stage and screen to the delight of thousands over the coming years. Who knows which are which, but a student play always has that special sense of possibility and promise.
I don’t know if my daughter will ever tread the boards, or ever want to, but I’m glad to have shown her, again, how much fun there is to be found in Shakespeare.
P.S. What I’m reading. I spent some time with my mother, so have been back to Emma Smith’s This is Shakespeare; we’ve read most of it together now, each chapter considering a different play.
When I’m travelling, I seem to pack lots of hopeful titles and then end up reading something much less satisfying on my Kindle. I missed last month’s book club, but I am going to read the book, Nell Stevens’s The Original, as it looks really good. This coming month we’re reading Generations by Lucille Clifton; I need to get hold of a copy, but from the reviews and description it looks excellent. And, less highbrow, the Yale Dramat returns this weekend with their 2026 Commencement Musical Mean Girls to which I’m taking the 12 year old. Fingers crossed.
Books for Our Children 