Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✩✩✩
by William Shakespeare, directed by Stephen Ouimette
Stratford Festival, Festival Theatre, Stratford
June 3-October 22, 2006
“Neighbours, You Are Tedious”
“Much Ado About Nothing” now playing at the Stratford Festival is its first since Richard Monette’s acclaimed “geriatric” “Much Ado” of 1998 starring Martha Henry and Brian Bedford as the sparring couple Beatrice and Benedick. The current production pales by comparison in every way seeming tired and devoid of energy even on opening night. One might think that the problem lies behind the scenes. Stephen Ouimette withdrew as director for health reasons at the time of its first dress rehearsal, whereupon former NAC Artistic Director Marti Maraden took on the thankless task of bringing it to opening. However, as it turns out, the problems with the play have far less to do with direction than with casting.
The kernel of the play is the battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick, who cannot refrain from trading insults whenever they are together. The couples’ friends realize that this too-much-protested enmity may in fact result from a mutual attraction that the pride of neither can acknowledge. The more the couples’ seeming aversion is clear the funnier its later overthrow.
As Beatrice, Lucy Peacock does absolutely nothing to signal this change. Her Beatrice speaks to Benedick in the same imperiously bantering manner at the start of the play as she does at the end. She does show Beatrice’s surprise when she overhears that Benedick loves her and she does show Beatrice’s awkwardness in dealing with Benedick immediately afterwards. But once those scenes are over she returns to her the way we first met her as if nothing had happened.
This leaves the work to Peter Donaldson as Benedick. In this he is very good. He practically snarls out his insults to Beatrice when he first meets her giving the impression that the couple has a past history that has left him bitter. For that reason his arguments for loving her after the orchard scene of Act 2, Scene 3, become wonderful examples of how flattery of self can lead people to reason themselves in to any position. While “comparisons are odorous”, as the constable Dogberry says, it must be admitted that Donaldson is not as adept as was Bedford of getting as much out of every word and pause, but it is still a fine performance.
All is not well in the subplot either. Adrienne Gould is delightful as the delicate, good-natured Hero, who quite realistically could faint when Claudio viciously calumniates her on her wedding day. But the tepid Jeffrey Wetsch shows none of the hotheadedness that characterizes Claudio and would make his rapid jumping to conclusions believable. He should be shattered by the news of Hero’s death, but all we get is blandness.
Among the nobles, Wayne Best seems to play the evil Don John in his sleep while Thom Marriott makes the lesser villain Borachio a far more interesting figure. Ian Deakin is excellent as usual as the warm-hearted, quick-witted Friar Francis, who saves the day when all about him fly into distraction. Shane Carty sonorous intones Don Pedro’s lines but does nothing to capture the character’s complex motivations. The most embarrassing performance comes from Gary Reineke in the important role of Leonato, Hero’s father and Beatrice’s uncle. With a laboured delivery, much slower than any of rest of the cast, he stumbles through his lines in a manner unacceptable at North America’s largest classical theatre festival.
The one actor who steals the show is Robert Persichini as the constable Dogberry. His Dogberry’s very deliberate delivery, as if every word were carefully weighed for effect, made certain, for a change, that every one of the bumbling detective’s multiple malapropisms was clearly heard and all the funnier for seeming so carefully chosen. What the directors had in mind by having Dogberry frequently hold hands with his “partner” Verges (played by Bernard Hopkins) is thankfully unclear.
The prime virtue of this staging is that the beautiful Festival stage, minus its central pillar, is for a change left bare save for minimal props carried on and off to signify changes of scene. In his programme note designer Michael Gianfrancesco states that he and Ouimette decided to keep the play’s setting in its original Messina but move it to the Edwardian period, specifically in the year 1910. While this makes for a pretty design, all in creams, beiges and earth tones glowing under John Munro’s sunny lighting, it also doesn’t make much sense.
The men in the play have just returned “from the wars”. These ongoing wars surrounding the world of the play are important both as a correlative for the “merry war” between Beatrice and Benedick and as an explanation for Claudio’s behaviour, a soldier bred to a world of action and suspicion who has not yet adjusted to a world of peace and trust. Gianfrancesco and the directors completely downplay these wars. The soldiers are so tidy looking they might as well have come from a changing of the guard. If Ouimette and Gianfrancesco wanted to make the production more interesting they should have chosen a time from 1911-12 during the Italo-Turkish War, when Italy made a failed attempt to seize Libya from the Ottoman Empire. This might have lent an irony and much-needed edge to this distinctly unincisive, unimaginative production.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Peter Donaldson and Lucy Peacock.
2006-06-13
Much Ado About Nothing