Much Ado About Nothing

Abstract

Reviewed by: Much Ado About Nothing Michael W. Shurgot Much Ado About Nothing Presented by Seattle Shakespeare Company at the Center Theatre, Seattle, WA. 26 April–22 May 2022. Directed by Allison Narver. Costumes by Natalie Shih. Set by Matthew Smucker. Lighting by Andrew D. Smith. Sound by Justin Johnson. Music by Jose Gonzales. With Jonelle Jordan (Beatrice), M. L. Roberts (Benedick), R. Hamilton Wright (Leonato), Brandon J. Simmons (Don Pedro), Meme García (Claudio), Joellen Sweeney (Hero), Sarah Harlett (Dogberry/Messenger), Nathaniel B. Tenenbaum (Verges/Antonio/Balthasar), Lindsay Welliver (Don John), Tim Gouran (Borachio/Friar Frances), Sharon Barto Gouran (Margaret/Watch), and Vahishta Vafadri (Ursula/Conrade). Seattle Shakespeare Company returned to live theater with a spirited production of Much Ado About Nothing. The set was Leonato’s summer villa, with brightly lit lanterns hanging from trees; an array of outdoor furniture, including small wooden tables, chairs, and chests; croquet hoops; and upstage right a steel liquor cart which characters visited frequently. Latin jazz serenaded spectators as they entered the theater. Three “panels,” each consisting of two high arches, one straight across the back of the stage and two others set at forty-five-degree angles stage left, created the illusion of several rooms within the small Center Theatre. All of the above stood on a raised platform covering roughly sixty percent of the stage where the majority of the action occurred, while actors used the downstage floor for soliloquies and as the area where Beatrice and Benedick fought—and passionately resolved—their verbal wars. Allison Narver coached some especially notable performances from a diverse cast. Sarah Harlett as Dogberry was dressed in shorts and a man’s shirt, and sported elbow and knee pads in case she had to go on a bike patrol. As part of their crime-fighting arsenal she and Verges wielded walkie-talkies and large red flags that crossing guards use. Maybe there was a grammar school nearby. R. Hamilton Wright was marvelous as a jubilant father for most of the play, bouncing around the stage in a [End Page 471] white three-piece suit and a straw hat, but at the initial church scene raged Lear-like at Hero’s supposed treachery. Wright’s sudden, terrifying explosion (he was so joyous just moments before!) reified the sinister patriarchal system at the heart of this comedy, in which (most) daughters are wooed by pretenders in masks and told whom to marry. Hero will obey her father, but Beatrice has no desire to be married to a “piece of valiant dust.” Narver also chose some intriguing doubling. Tim Gouran was equally sinister as Borachio and caring as Friar Francis; and Nathaniel Tenenbaum was equally silly as Verges and furious as Antonio confronting Claudio after Hero’s reported death. He also, as an unnamed court entertainer, sang “Hey Nonny Nonny” in a beautiful contralto voice. Meme García and Joellen Sweeney were capable as Claudio and Hero. They resemble each other physically (both short), and in their few scenes portrayed well the initial shyness and uncertainty of young love. Upon first seeing each other they immediately launched into a series of arm motions resembling cheerleaders at a football game or sailors landing jet fighters on an aircraft carrier. These gestures were apparently intended to signal immediate attraction, and perhaps were meant to symbolize some lingering fondness from their earlier acquaintance implied by the play-text. But coming so early in the play, well before Claudio tells Benedick and Don Pedro that formerly he but “looked upon [Hero] with a soldier’s eye” (1.1.278), this arm waving was silly. At the end of his mourning at Hero’s tomb in act five, scene three, Claudio repeated these gestures to a “post-mortem” Hero backlit stage right and enshrined in her white gossamer wedding gown. A strange way perhaps of signaling “I am sorry” or “I still love you,” as if the words of the epitaph were not sufficient to express his grief. Unbeknown to Claudio, Hero is of course alive in the scene, and so is watching Claudio repeat their love gestures. But in the fiction of the scene—Hero is dead—the gestures were again...