Last night I went to see my daughter in the Heartland Actors Repertory Theater (HART) of Shakespeare's romantic comedy
Much Ado About Nothing. My daughter had a minor role as "Ursula", a lady in waiting to one of the two female leads. This was billed as "Shakespeare On the Canal" as the production was done in the open air at White River Park. This was a professional production with most the performers belonging to Actors Equity (though not my daughter) and all the performers were paid.
If you have not seen this show it is one where the comedy relies on dialogue rather the farcical physical comedy of say
A Midsummer Night's Dream. Much of the humor comes from insults exchanged by sharp witted characters who will eventually sheath their sword like tongues and fall in love. They don't make romantic comedies like this today. The sophistication of plot, depth of characters and sheer richness of language is just not around any more. Though I will say the old movies like
Pillow Talk or
Some Like it Hot capture some of the tangled webs.
The play focuses on two couples who must find their way to love. Benedick and Beatrice are as confirmed and devout never-to-marry-devoted-to-batchelor (and batchelorette) for life as you will find. Beatrice is simply a man despising woman with a wit so sharp she can make men bleed with her acid tongue. Young ladies today desiring to improve their own insults towards men will do well to study her lines. Benedick is a man like many of us know. He is a fun loving, jovial fellow who is having far too much fun as a batchelor to be entrapped by the confining institutions of love and marriage. His ego is as great as Beatrice's wit and he would sooner die than devote himself to one woman.
Bringing these two together requires the machinations of their mutual friends. Benedick's friends tell him that they have heard that Beatrice loves him deeply and is hiding it behind her insults of him. Naturally Beatrice's friends simultaneously tell her that they have heard Benedick confess his love for her and that he just hides it behind his outwardly jovial and playboy image. This leads to a change in how the characters interact with each other as they believe the other loves them.
The other couple is Claudio and Hero. Claudio is the hopelessly in love romantic as much as Benedick is to avowed batchelor for life. He quickly woos and is engaged to marry the woman of his dreams, Hero. But as external forces sought to create love in the rivals Benedick and Beatrice, a different set of external forces plot to destroy the love between Claudio and Hero. A low life malcontent named Don John will not allow this happy love to come to a conclusion of marital bliss. With a pair of his toadies he plots to slander Hero by convincing Claudio that she has been unfaithful to him.
Throw in some buffoonish cops, and suffice it to say that hilarity ensues. But rest easy for this is one of Shakespeare's comedies, not a tragedy, so be assured that love conquers all and that all's well that ends well (actually, I think that's another show).
Some folks say that "nobody gets Shakespeare." Not true. When performed well by actors who speak their lines clearly and who understand the lines and characters to bring them to life with correct emphasis and characterizations, everybody gets Shakespeare. That happened last night as the crowd of about a thousand laughed heartily at the many, many funny lines in this show. The humor of the dialogue gets to everyone, even with the old language.
A testament to how the audience loved the show was proven early in the 2d Act when the skies, which were threatening before the play started, opened up and it rained. Amazingly, the show went on and almost everybody in the audience stayed. I saw only a very few leave. The rain stopped by the end of the show and everyone was wet, and still laughing.
Notwithstanding the rain, this is also a fun way to see Shakespeare. We were with good friends, we had wine and watched a wonderfully entertaining show with wine, rain, laughter and plenty of satisfied "Ahhhhhsss" as characters fell in love, or fell back in love. Great fun.
"A man never drinks anything that a plant lives in" --DBone (A Real Man).
http://vimeo.com/4938173
