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We are deluded into thinking that each era gets the Shakespeare it deserves, or perhaps the Shakespeare it desperately needs. A prime example is the Federal Theatre Project’s production of Macbeth, which opened at Harlem’s Lafayette Theatre in 1936, with an all-black cast and Orson Welles directing—it introduces us to the overwhelming sense that something momentous was about to happen. Any witch could have predicted it. But what about eras steeped in even greater distraction and confusion? Do we want as much Shakespeare as we can handle, and no more?
A bright new light is being shed on these dark affairs, thanks to a fresh take on Much Ado About Nothing at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, in London. The show’s calling card is its stars, and the audience answered the call. I attended a matinee on a grey Thursday, and the house was packed with anticipation of the leads. Benedict is played by Tom Hiddleston, and Beatrice is played by Hayley Atwell; in other words, if you’re a Marvel fan, this is the man who plays Loki in three Avengers films and three Thor films, and the woman who plays Peggy Carter. (For those who don’t know, she’s a plucky, friendly British agent from World War II who’s close to Captain America.) At one point, midway through Much Ado, life-size cardboard cutouts of Hiddleston and Atwell, dressed in Marvel costumes, are brought on stage to cheers: The meta just got simpler.
The stage at the Royal Theatre is wide and deep, and filling it can be difficult. (Decades ago, it was a popular venue for Rodgers and Hammerstein shows. Frozen ran there for three years. The next adaptation after Shakespeare is Disney’s Hercules.) For much of Much Ado, directed by Jamie Lloyd, the vast expanse of the stage is strewn with pink confetti – so much so in one scene that Benedict manages to roll around in it, as if playing with autumn leaves. Props, by contrast, are largely limited to the ten chairs on which some of the characters tend to sit while listening to others speak. They generally wear the same clothes from the first scene to the last. Whether this style of performance has a technical name, I’m not sure. Over-the-top minimalism? Stripped-down camp? Either way, I suppose it saves money.
In an interesting parallel event, across town, something similar is happening. On an equally capacious stage, the Barbican Theatre, another classic play, Chekhov’s The Seagull, has been both shortened and beefed up. Once again, it is crowned by a famous name: the heroine, a self-styled actress called Irina, is played by Cate Blanchett. Instead of confetti, we get a thicket of tall foliage through which the characters rustle into view. Otherwise, the equipment consists of a quad bike, a golf cart and little else. There are not ten chairs on which the actors sit, but an even more radical seven. Before the action begins, one of the characters enters, picks up an electric guitar, jokes with the audience, and then sings “The Milkman of Human Kindness,” a husky plaintive song by the British protest singer Billy Bragg.
Can Much Ado compare? Of course. If you’re looking for a period drama, I have bad news: There are few lutes in this interpretation. Instead, the entertainment begins with Margaret (Mason Alexander Park) serenading us with “Tell It to My Heart,” a club standard first heard in the late Eighties. Then there are, scattered throughout the show, the Beastie Boys’ “Fight for Your Right,” Missy Elliott’s “Work It,” and other tunes that are meant to convince us that going to the theater is, or should be, an impromptu rave rather than a routine cultural practice. By the final curtain, that persuasive task, even the strictest purist will admit, has been accomplished. The cast cheerfully performs a collective movement to the strains of “When Love Takes Over,” and the audience stands and claps along. What’s more, the actors follow the play’s final line to the letter. “Play on, pipers,” Benedict proclaims, and the stage directions support him: “Dance, and then come out.”
Much Ado About Nothing's reputation as a crowd-pleaser is hardly new. The appendix to the 1640 edition of Shakespeare included a short-lived but informative poem by a man named Leonard Digges, who described a crowd ready to be entertained: “Let Beatrice / And Benedick be seen, here in a moment / Cockpit, galleries, boxes, all filled.” His emphasis on the leading couple, at the expense of everyone else, set a tone that has endured
Sourse: newyorker.com
