REVIEW: Love’s Labour’s Won/Much Ado About Nothing – at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon until March 14, 2015.

DELIGHTFUL! Really - an absolute gem that deserved the roar of acclaim from an equally delighted audience at its conclusion.

Having watched the thoroughly enjoyable Love’s Labour’s Lost a couple of weeks before it was good to see the standards that had been set then were magnificently maintained, such as the levels of acting, especially the timing and cracking comedic moments.

All credit to director Christopher Luscombe who ensured all was perfectly pitched to provide maximum pleasure.

Lost and Won - or rather Much Ado, are two of the Bard’s most sparkling romantic comedies and the decision by the creative team to set them in the long shadows cast by the First World War – and in its centenary year - worked like a dream and is particularly poignant.

What certainly helped both shine were Simon Higlett’s sets, which were based on the nearby Elizabethan stately home of Charlecote Park. They were sumptuous, as were the costumes, with full use of the RST’s huge thrust stage to take us in and out of Charlecote’s library, drawing room and gardens, and excellent use too of the stage’s central section when it rose from the depths.

Everything about the two plays came across convincingly. The emotion as the horrors of war loomed and the joy when peace came – with this second part taking up the action at a country house Christmas party in 1918 as the men – the loves that had been lost – returned. But would affections be won?

The romantic frolics that follow, the incredible word play – particularly via Beatrice and Benedick, the central pair of lovers, and especially the police canteen-cum-kitchen knockabout were top notch. This latter scene was straight out of the Will Hay or Tommy Cooper sketch book, with Nick Haverson’s Dogberry, the constable who mangles all his words, providing as much fun as did his gardener, Costard, in LLL.

Considering the actors are doubling up across both works, and will be doing so through well into the New Year, their energy and earnestness is to be commended.

The verbal sparring of the main lovers, played again by Edward Bennett and the splendid Michelle Terry, burst out like a fine fireworks display and throughout the support from the rest of the cast was excellent.

Bennett works the famous gulling-scene admirably with classic comedy via curtains and his hilarious appearance inside a huge Christmas tree!

Sam Alexander’s Don John, the brother of Prince Don Pedro, provides the bitter dark against the joviality of victory with a balanced broodiness aimed at scuppering a wedding, and others impress too such as David Horovitch’s compassionate and commanding Leonato, father of snubbed Hero, who in turn is delightfully portrayed by Flora Spencer-Longhurst.

Credit also to musical composer Nigel Hess whose songs of quality in both plays were evocative of an era long gone as they provided shades of Noel Coward and hints of others of that time.

There’s always been a lot of conjecture whether or not Much Ado is Shakespeare’s so-called missing Won play but that doesn’t really matter, for Much Ado continues to be a popular and heart-warming offering and this version will help cement its place in the affections of the theatre-going public.