10.24.2005
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Much Ado about Nothing
One of The Bard's better comedies, set in Messina, Sicily, and clearly many years before the creation of the U.S. Army Air Corps. We saw "Much Ado" yesterday at the Folger Theatre (Washington Post review). Marvelous cast; solid performances by all, some brilliant.
Small problem, at least for those of us who love Shakespeare: the setting of the play was updated to immediate post-war England. The main characters who just returned from war were portrayed as members of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the governor of Messina, Leonato, was portrayed as an English lord. All well and good, the play's themes were still visible. Even modern trashing of the setting can't totally cloud Shakespeare's genius.
So, why complain? After all, if the story is eternally valid, and the acting good, who's the worse off? The chief victim here was the suspension of disbelief that is an essential ingredient to the success of any fantasy. And, make no mistake, "Much Ado" is a fantasy, meaning a story that simply can not otherwise be taken seriously.
The biggest obstacle to that needed suspension of disbelief? When characters, ostensibly American or English, address each other as "Signior." Works like a charm in Sicily. Odd to the point of intruding on the play's continuity given the setting. The other thing? The royal titles, such as "count", being applied to men in American uniforms.
"Much Ado" is not the first time the Folger, and a good many other companies, have updated Shakespeare's settings. Sometimes it works, as it did for me in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo + Juliet. In the movie, anachronisms such as semi-automatic pistols for swords could be made an in-joke by ironic product placement of the "Sword" brand of 9mm pistols. And the setting was, at least, still Verona, and very much a Mediterranean, Latinate culture.
All in all, "Much Ado" was delightful, yet its updating presented superfluous obstacles to its full enjoyment. The cast had to work a little bit harder than it should have had to. Let Shakespeare's work stand alone; it does not usually benefit from modern embellishment.
Small problem, at least for those of us who love Shakespeare: the setting of the play was updated to immediate post-war England. The main characters who just returned from war were portrayed as members of the U.S. Army Air Corps, and the governor of Messina, Leonato, was portrayed as an English lord. All well and good, the play's themes were still visible. Even modern trashing of the setting can't totally cloud Shakespeare's genius.
So, why complain? After all, if the story is eternally valid, and the acting good, who's the worse off? The chief victim here was the suspension of disbelief that is an essential ingredient to the success of any fantasy. And, make no mistake, "Much Ado" is a fantasy, meaning a story that simply can not otherwise be taken seriously.
The biggest obstacle to that needed suspension of disbelief? When characters, ostensibly American or English, address each other as "Signior." Works like a charm in Sicily. Odd to the point of intruding on the play's continuity given the setting. The other thing? The royal titles, such as "count", being applied to men in American uniforms.
"Much Ado" is not the first time the Folger, and a good many other companies, have updated Shakespeare's settings. Sometimes it works, as it did for me in Franco Zeffirelli's Romeo + Juliet. In the movie, anachronisms such as semi-automatic pistols for swords could be made an in-joke by ironic product placement of the "Sword" brand of 9mm pistols. And the setting was, at least, still Verona, and very much a Mediterranean, Latinate culture.
All in all, "Much Ado" was delightful, yet its updating presented superfluous obstacles to its full enjoyment. The cast had to work a little bit harder than it should have had to. Let Shakespeare's work stand alone; it does not usually benefit from modern embellishment.
posted by Jack Rich at 10:40 AM
I was born, grew up, and went to school in the Bronx, New York -- on the wrong side of the
tracks. Got the chance to go to college, so instead of joining the NYPD (the obvious career choice at
that time and place), I became an engineer. Spent
some years designing things that go boom (or things that take things that go boom to their destinations...), principally for our military.
Also took an interesting career turn and for some years was in charge of counter-terrorism for my agency...so I learned something about guns. And when to use them.
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