Much Ado About Something

The something is a breezy production of Much Ado About Nothing by Theatre For a New Audience.  Last winter I saw TFANA’s Arin Arbus-directed production of The Taming of the Shrew  with Maggie Siff as Kate.  This year the same director pairs Maggie Siff as Beatrice with the marvelous Jonathan Cake as Benedick. 

TFANA makes excellent use of the space at the Duke Theatre on 42^nd Street.  Again they create multiple playing levels by using the catwalk above the two-stepped stage, plus a tree for climbing and hiding.  As if that weren’t enough, there’s an extra variable level: a swing for Beatrice, Benedick, then both to rise and fall on.  This clever, compact scenic design by Riccardo Hernandez is both warm and practical, as is the lighting design by Donald Holder.  Director Arbus set the play in Italy before World War I, so the men’s costuming is fairly modern while the women are still in the confining clothing of the prewar period, illustrating the difference in levels of social freedom accorded to each sex, which feeds the Don John subplot that casts doubt on Hero’s chastity.  That said, the costuming by Constance Hoffman is less than exciting, but the hair is fabulous.

Any production of Much Ado must find the balance between the light and dark of its two storylines, since the lightness of the primary romance between the juvenile and the ingénue is darkened by the evil machinations of Don John.  Claudio and Hero are such dull creatures that they couldn’t carry a standard romance, so Shakespeare threw in the classical “chaste-maid-falsely-accused” plot to keep it moving.  Unfortunately for a modern audience this plot causes some issues; for instance, we cannot understand why Margaret does not speak up immediately upon recognizing her own actions falsely ascribed to Hero as the bride is falsely accused at the church.  But not to worry.  Beatrice and Benedick elucidate all while falling more deeply in love. 

Cake and Siff are good partners, their sprightly badinage a challenge and a delight to classical actors.  Reluctant lovers Beatrice & Benedick are the ancestors of every good romantic team in theatre and film — think Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant in Bringing Up Baby, Grant and Rosalind Russell in His Girl Friday, Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers in, well, anything.  Maggie Siff is having a fine time as Beatrice, but is not having quite as much fun as Jonathan Cake is having with Benedick — he’s having such a lark that he almost sweats his beard off.  Seeing this production makes me think of Kenneth Branagh’s 1993 film, that of the spectacularly funny opening credits, and the magical connection between Branagh and then-wife Emma Thompson as Benedick and Beatrice.  They were magnificent because of the sparks each created in the other.  Siff and Cake are good, but the magic doesn’t quite happen. 

Photo by Richard Perry (c) 2013 New York Times

I recall that Michelle Beck’s performance as Celia in the Bridge Project’s As You Like It was uneven, and here, too, she sometimes overcomes the character Hero as written, then other times succumbs to the blandness, as most actors do.  Her occasional flashes of anger at her accuser are most welcome.  Matthew Amendt’s Claudio is childishly enthusiastic, then jealous, and his work at the tomb of his bride is moving, but his Claudio has less depth than Ms. Beck’s Hero.

Graham Winton is a vulnerable Don Pedro, and his proposal to Beatrice is quite touching, her rejection even more painful.  John Keating, not unusually, plays two opposite roles and both quite well, the priest and Verges.

Robert Langdon Lloyd does heartfelt work as Leonato, father of Hero. It’s always good to see Peter Maloney, here twice blessed as Leonato’s brother Antonio and the Sexton.  John Christopher Jones’ Dogberry stumbled over the English language with veracity and vigor.

Denis Butkus and Paul Niebanck work well together as Conrade and Borachio respectively, the followers of the villainous Don John, who is played with a quirky intensity by Saxon Palmer.

Kate MacCluggage is quite entertaining as the overly friendly Margaret.  Elizabeth Meadows Rouse as her pal Ursula is rather amateurish — she seems to be playing a stock character, in common with the other tertiary characters such as Balthazar and the Watch.

.  Cake as Benedick and Siff as Beatrice.  Photo (c) 2013 by Gerry Goodstein

The company is charming and energetic and the audience is happy to spend a few hours with them.  Arin Arbus’ leading actors did fine work together, always returning to the witty and swell repartee of Beatrice and Benedick.  This Much Ado About Nothing is a cleverly pleasant evening in the theatre and runs through April 6th.

~ Molly Matera, signing off once I’ve ordered the DVD of the Branagh film.

Shakespeare in Frontierville

A rip-roaring production of The Taming of The Shrew opened this weekend at the Duke Theatre on 42^nd Street.  Theatre for a New Audience brings us back to the old west to experience a rollicking, jolly, remarkably American production of Shakespeare’s controversial comedy.

(c) Theatre for a New Audience

Director Arin Arbus reins in the 16^th century European setting to the 19^th century western frontier.  The scene is familiar, warm brown wood flooring and walls, beams going every which way on doors, shutters, a balcony.  The two-storied set by by Donyale Werle is classical in style, yet like “Frontiersville” in nature.  Anita Yavich’s costumes wrap natural hues around the company, appearing at once timeless and settled in the wild west.  As the audience enters a plinking piano played throughout by Jonathan Mastro is comfortingly reminiscent of saloon scenes from movie westerns.  Michael Friedman’s music combines traditional western “cowboy” music with Italian opera of the period, the latter in a particularly hilarious sequence when disguised Hortensio attempts to teach Bianca to sing. 

Lighting by Marcus Doshi is atmospheric, with footlights surrounding the stage, candles hanging from above. “Effects”of the sun and moon are as they would have been created by a 19^th century company.  Doug Elkins’ choreography works with the geography and the characters.

Director Arbus has chosen to maintain the blatant theatricality of the often-omitted Christopher Sly sub-plot, making Sly the town drunk tossed out of the saloon, where he can be wittily played upon by the local “lord” and a traveling theatrical troupe.  It’s a fine conceit, with Sly occasionally interrupting the proceedings, reminding us this is a play within a play we’re watching, and that everyone is someone other than who they profess to be.

Said play within the play takes place in 16^th Century Padua, where Baptista (Robert Langdon Lloyd) has two daughters: The elder is called Kate the Curst, while the younger, Bianca, is wooed by gentlemen old and young.  Baptista will not allow his younger daughter to be courted until his elder is wed, so Bianca’s suitors — Hortensio (a preening, stuttering, Saxon Palmer), Gremio (John Christopher Jones plays the traditional pantaloon with sympathy and humor), and the newly arrived Lucentio (Denis Butkus) — need someone to marry Kate.  Enter Petruchio, who has come to wive it wealthily in Padua while doing a great deal of slapstick. 

Maggie Siff as Kate and Andy Grotelueschen as Petruchio (C) 2012 Henry Grossman

Lucentio and his servant Tranio exchange clothing (and pseudo-identities) onstage, each revealing long-johns.  John Keating as the devious servant Tranio, however, is taller than Lucentio, so he spends the play strutting, posing, and conspiring in pants that are too short for him.  Kathryn Saffell is an amusing and intelligent Bianca, one moment a pouting victim, the next a flirt, and finally a veritable shrew herself.  The happily ubiquitous John Pankow is excellent as Grumio, conspiratorial servant to Petruchio and his partner in slapstick.

In this production, the titular Kate was clearly a tomboy just a few years ago.  She is now rangy and tough and no-nonsense.  It is perfectly clear only fools or liars come to court, for they really only want her soft and feminine little sister.  This Kate is an unrepresented, disrespected woman that weaker men wish to repress.  She’s funny, she’s sharp, she’s a little scary:  I half expected her to draw a derringer — or maybe a bullwhip.  She is personified perfectly by Maggie Siff.  In most of Shakespeare’s plays, the witty, wordsmithing woman is silenced after her marriage.  Not so Kate.  Once she is “tamed,” she has a long speech instructing women how to deal with their men, and thereby how to live in the world.  It’s not a swell world, but it’s the only one they’ve got.  The men in Kate’s world are dainty, where she is dauntless.  It takes a wild fellow named Petruchio to choose a highly imaginative method of wooing in order to tame.  This bold and bawdy man is played rather like a rich rancher’s son, but not a bad guy — a Cartwright, perhaps.  He’ll work his land, but he’s used to having money and wants it.  Andy Grotelueschen is a charming, tough yet thoughtful Petruchio, whose bravado can be seen to fade in face of his Kate.  After tempests are tossed about, quiet negotiations between this pair become surprisingly sweet love scenes you would not have imagined could appear in this play.

Andy Grotelueschen and Maggie Siff in TFANA's "The Taming of the Shrew"  (c) 2012 Gerry Goodstein

Theatre For A New Audience has brought together a fine, highly skilled company of players. There was really only one actor who seemed apart from the rest, not for lack of enthusiasm.

Shakespeare is quite at home in the American west, having toured through its mining towns, from tents to shanties to young cities, in dance halls, saloons and bona fide theatres — or the open air.  Ms. Arbus has set this production just where The Taming of the Shrew belongs.  The play runs at the Duke until April 21.  If you’re in town, go.  If you’re not, come visit.  (www.tfana.org)