I love Much Ado About Nothing. It’s hilarious. Beatrice and Benedick are so exactly, entirely true, in their divine foolishness and their loving hatred. Dogbury’s bending, folding and mutilating of our mother tongue reduces me to helpless laughter, as does the humiliation and desperation of the villains caught in his less-than-cunning dragnet.
Of course, when I was younger, there was the Kenneth Branagh-directed version, which I whole-heartedly adored, willing to set aside the flat, unsophisticated delivery of Keanu Reeves as Don John, especially when weighed against Emma Thompson’s sparkling Beatrice. The bloom came a bit off the production when I later studied the play, and noticed how hard Branagh had worked to whitewash the ending — it’s a tribute to Kate Beckinsale that she managed to keep me from wondering, all those years, what the dickens “And when I lived, I was your other wife: /And when you loved, you were my other husband” could mean that would make it happy.
Now, why, you may ask, do I spend so much time talking about a movie version of the play, when I purport to treat of the Ashland production thereof? Simple enough; that movie was blasted popular. Every stage production of Much Ado I saw for years and years afterwards was laboring in its shadow, and knew it only too well. The Beatrices and Benedicks were cast as May-December, or unappealling, or twisted the lines out of their normal key, all to distance themselves from Kenneth and Emma warring and wooing in Tuscany. I saw productions that made Beatrice ridiculous, her passionate love and hatred the object of fun. I saw productions that made Benedick uncouth to the point where I wondered if they’d mistaken him for Sir Toby Belch. They were awful.
Not so, not so, was this one. The Ashland production went its own way, but did not seem to be analyzing the inflection of each line for traces of Ken & Em’s cadences. The director had reread the play, and decided that the farcical antics, the war of the sexes, the masked parties, would accord well with a 1930’s screwball romantic comedy. And so they did. The Prince and his men arrived in WWI-era uniforms, and doffed them joyfully for tuxedos. Beatrice prowled the garden in Katharine Hepburn-style swooshy pants. Don John wore spats, and his henchmen slunk around in the best gangster-underling fashion.
The best part was, naturally and joyfully, Beatrice and Benedick. They were fiery and quick, and had believable chemistry. Benedick seemed a believable soldier, a believable man’s man, while Beatrice had an absolutely delightful slapstick side I’ve never seen applied to the character before. The banter seemed natural and fun, and while the audience did laugh on “Kill Claudio” (the cardinal sin of the ‘Beatrice is silly’ production), it was because Benedick had so obviously committed himself to something he so obviously didn’t want to do. It wasn’t at Beatrice, it was at Benedick.
Another interesting choice was playing up the Prince’s marriage proposal to Beatrice. It gave his character a little more depth, and got some laughs (“how little he deserves so sweet a lady!” sob).
So, what was wrong? Well, the director had this quote in the program about how we are all clowns, and he decided, after trotting Beatrice and Hero out in some lovely ballgowns and the men in tuxes before the maskers’ ball, to have absolutely everyone inexplicably dressed in clown costumes during the actual maskers’ ball. They only wore masks with the clown outfits. Would it have hurt to just have them in masks and their own clothes? It certainly would have made more sense — and dressing women and men alike sort of broke the 1930’s illusion for me. They had some more clown-dressed Ensemble players sitting around in the background of the last scene, too, I believe. Whatever the clown thing was, he pushed it.
The other problem was also in the last scene — that selfsame pivotal moment where Claudio discovers Hero yet lives, and the imperfect terms on which their marriage will be predicated. While the lines, such as the “When I lived” line, were delivered properly (in an emotional tenor appropriate to their rather grave content), the moment was rushed — we didn’t really see Claudio react to that line, and the emotional impact, the painful truth that some scars don’t go away and some innocence does not return, was definitely lessened. It seemed they wanted to rush ahead to the happy, funny union of the B’s.
Bottom line: Excellently acted, well-staged and costumed production, bubbling with good spirits and comic touches. Go to it. 9 out of 10.
Comments
Silly--umm.
I don’t think that a laugh on “Kill Claudio” is ever acceptable in any semi-conventional version of Much Ado. That scene is probably the hardest scene in all of Shakespearean comedy. The old dynamic of the characters has to be mixed with their new language of romance and with their very, very different priorities. “Kill Claudio” is a very frightening and sad line, and if it draws laughs, something is wrong.
Re: Silly--umm.
Well, precisely. The fact is that I was made uncomfortable by the laugh, but not filled with righteous hatred as I was at the “Beatrice is Silly” production. On reflection, I decided it was okay, because it seemed very squarely to be laughing at Benedick (come to think of it, could the laugh have actually followed “Not for the wide world”? That would explain my lack of righteous rage.)
I wouldn’t want any laughter at that part of the scene if I were to produce it (of course laughter is permissible at the ridiculously convoluted and cautious pre-declarations of love), but then again I am the girl who frightened her acting partner and her high school Shakespeare class with her sheer venom in this scene. I find it a very serious scene, one of the more realistic treatments of the limitations and frustrations of Elizabethan womanhood in Shakespeare. Beatrice is, patently, the equal of a man. She meets or bests Benedick, wit for wit. She is a good friend, tactful when need arises (the Prince’s proposal) and able to reason even in her greatest emotional distress. However, because she is a woman, there are things - to her, and her family’s honor, vital things - which are denied her. Avenues of redress and public vindication which are open to men are closed to her, and her lack of a brother or male cousin cripples her. In a way, one might say that by enlisting Benedick, she is trying to use the coidentification of love to lodge her needs and passion in a male ‘self’ able to do the things her gender is denied.
Er, what was I talking about? Oh, yes, it’s a very important scene, and I agree that those lines shouldn’t get a laugh. But in this case I’m willing to allow its validity, as I often do with an interesting take that I don’t agree with.
I believe, basically, the way they were playing the scene is this: the play has just become, for lack of a better word, tragic. Beatrice is firmly in a tragic vein here. Benedick, who is not really much at home in a tragic anything, professes his love, either to comfort Beatrice, or moved by her sorrow and passion. He seems to expect the play to resume being a (romantic) comedy—but Beatrice is reluctant to go there, as her circumlocutions and resistance to professing the love we know she feels attest. He gets her to admit her love, and immediately, full of romantic comedy gushing, says, “Come, bid me do any thing for thee.” Beatrice, however, is still in a tragedy, and tells him to kill Claudio. The humor they decided to tap was in Benedick’s folly in A) believing himself to be back in a carefree lovemaking scene, and B) promising to do anything. We’ve all read fairy tales. You NEVER DO THAT! The portrayal of Beatrice’s feelings and passion was serious; the portrayal of Benedick’s folly, confusion, and mixed emotions was not.
So, as I said, I wouldn’t have done it, but it’s interesting.