Word: ado
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...MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare...
...state of grace and the seraphim move in minute, minuet steps. No mortals need apply here, in this latest Royal Shakespeare Company triumph, which opened last week at Broadway's Gershwin Theater in repertory with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. In the Much Ado realm, gods and goddesses play at love, duel with words, feign indifference and even death to gauge a suitor's passion-all to wile away a heavenly three hours...
When it was first performed at the end of the 16th century, Much Ado must have seemed as modern as Utopia. The main plot dated back to the Greeks: fair Hero is slandered, then allows her lover Claudio to think she has died. But the subplot, in which Hero's cousin Beatrice and Claudio's friend Benedick talk themselves out of and then into love, served up a sexual set-to whose rapier eloquence has inspired just about every British playwright of manners from Congreve to Coward and beyond. While Hero and Claudio played out their fustian collision...
...Much Ado succeeds not just because of its stars but because of the graceful way they blend into the grand design of an enchanting production. This is the fourth Much Ado to have been staged by the R.S.C. in 15 years; one would think that by now Director Terry Hands could do it in his dreams. And so he has. Borrowing moods and motifs from distinguished R.S.C. predecessors-the rigorous gaiety of a Peter Brook circus, the majesty of a Trevor Nunn midnight Mass-Hands has turned Shakespeare's most popular comedy into a dream play with music...
Hands has said that a director must be "prepared to trust Shakespeare." Here that means highlighting each word and gesture so that it plays for a modern audience. In Much Ado Hands digs deep into a bag that must be marked TRICKS THAT WORK. A courtly messenger declaims his prose in an Elmer Fudd accent; Benedick parades his manhood with the rakish tilt of his sword sheath; Constable Dogberry (Christopher Benjamin) casually flings a purse in the air, and his deputy Verges catches it in his hat. The gags, however earthbound, raise laughs hearty enough to fill Broadway...