What a joy! What a victory! There has been an exceedingly merry war waged tonight in the Barron and the winners are all the audience. After two sleepless weeks of too much (mostly happy and willing) work and moving into the busiest week yet I had hoped to be able to write a short and simple review of this semester’s second Shakespeare, which I hadn’t heard much talk about and is full of faces I don’t know; but no. This is a brilliant production of Much Ado About Nothing from all on board, bringing out all the comedy and chaotic energy of Shakespeare’s text and adding plenty more besides. And the actors know very almost all of their many complicated lines! And can say them without stumbling! And also there are gay people! All this cramped into the tiny space of the Barron (I cannot imagine how the 12 (!) actors got past each other in the wings) – I recommend you hurry to get a ticket for the second night, because this is absolutely worth watching.
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ID: Elodie Bain, Margo Anderson, Oli Suthersanen-Tutt, Chiaka Ajoku, Lila Ahnger, Alice Polgrean, Freddie Crawford, Thea Kendall-Green, Lila Patterson, Libby Mullen, Charley Beck, and Phoenix Carlson.
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It’s all done against a very minimalist set, just various different types of chairs, allowing for lots of creative blocking (my only criticism is that there’s quite a lot of sitting on the edge of the stage, which is really cool in an ideal world but is unfortunately not visible to 80% of the audience in the Barron if they aren’t unusually tall like me) and for the actors to take all the attention. The lighting is similarly minimalist, mostly just stage washes with some dramatic greens for Don John, lovely reds for the dances, and then a startlingly beautiful cut to pink at the end. And the production team is also extremely very alarmingly minimal for a complicated play with a large cast and quite a lot of dancing and singing: just Director Riley Christian, Producer Jackson Banner-Robinson, Wellbeing Coordinator Emma Croft-Smith, and Technicians Lewis Fitez and Scotty Henley, with Scotty serving double duty as Stage Manager. Somehow incomprehensibly they’ve made it work – the actors come on and are very well-rehearsed and seem to be enjoying every minute of it. This production is very vaguely set in a high school reunion in California, which allows for fun costumes, lots of late 90s music and ABBA, and some very funny moments, with no major changes to the script.
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ID: Freddie Crawford.
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Basically everyone gets at least one big time in the spotlight and they all slay very hard, but also everyone’s so good at snappily exchanging comedic blows and laughing at each other. The focus is of course on Charley Beck’s Beatrice and Freddie Crawford’s Benedick, who both like wearing sunglasses and taking them off at apposite moments. Charley is in a David Bowie t-shirt and Doc Martens and ripped jorts, and is so in her element looking sassy and swaggering around and making witty rejoinders, and then so relatably panicked and vulnerable and still making stupid jokes at the prospect of actual emotional sincerity – and then another and then in an exquisite red jumpsuit going from righteous fury to sobbing her eyes out to very cute happiness and simply put I am in love. Freddie’s extremely energetic Benedick meanwhile is a bit of a jock (double denim and an American sports t-shirt I probably don’t catch the significance of) and must undergo character development. He is so full of exaggerated incredibly silly joy at the idea of Beatrice being in love with him and sidles and swaggers and literally jumps all over the stage, and then through the audience and the wings and randomly crawling backwards and trying to surreptitiously drink a Coke when eavesdropping on Don Pedro (this production exploits the potential for over-the-top physical comedy in
Much Ado to the utmost, especially with these gulling scenes – Beatrice also gets water brutally poured on her). But he must quietly and hesitantly learn to be mature and serious, repeatedly almost walking away before deciding to stick with Beatrice – and then in the resolution he can be silly again with his hilarious attempt at a love song, and a truly extravagant kiss.
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ID: Charley Beck.
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The other couple, Hero and Claudia, are traditionally a bit less interesting… but! I wrote Claudia, not Claudio. Yes! Lesbians! Though in terms of vibes actually way straighter than Beatrice and Benedick. Libby Mullen’s Hero is incredibly sweet and demure and mindful, smoothly deceiving Beatrice, going along with everyone’s jokes (with lots of knowing glances) while being totally sincere and charming – and then abjectly miserable. She does so much with her few lines and overall makes only more insoluble the age-old question of how Claudia can possibly deserve to marry her. Alice Polgrean’s Claudia has a lot of fun joking around in the first half of the play and is all naive and then all repentant at the end, but shines the most as a total arrogant uncaring asshole, who says the infamous ‘there will I shame her’ like it’s nothing and is completely unfazed by and dismissive of even the news of Hero’s death and Benedick’s challenge. I have some slight interpretative issues with the production in relation to this. In my mind Claudio is the archetype of toxic masculinity; the Hero/Claudio plot is all about asshole men deciding things for and about women without ever talking to them; and while I’m aggressively in for all sorts of playing with gender I feel like turning Claudio into Claudia reduces the power of all the ‘like a man’ repetitions in the climax of the play as well as Beatrice’s solidarity with Hero against the men (which is played up to brilliant effect here). There are also perhaps slight difficulties with the play’s famously awkward disjunct between comedy, then very compressed intense tragedy, then comedy again – this production leans heavily into over-the-top comedy, but I’m left slightly hating Claudia and Don Pedro even after a very satisfying punch by Beatrice.
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ID: Elodie Bain, Lila Ahnger, and Phoenix Carlson.
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Speaking of Don Pedro – Thea Kendall-Green is great (did I mention everyone’s great?), so poised and full of knowing smiles and grand gestures and outstretched arms, total authoritative queen (princess? whatever) I would do anything she says even though she’s also a bigot about women’s chastity. Chiaka Ajoku’s Leonato is adorably sincere in an orange polo shirt, playing along with the jokes, frustrated at Dogberry when setting up chairs for the wedding, and then powerfully angry and emotional. Oli Suthersanen-Tutt is a very silly friar with his cowboy hat of divinity, and Margo Anderson has a lot of fun as Ursula, stamping gloriously on Claudia’s foot. Elodie Bain is gloriously sassy and commanding as Margaret making fun of both Beatrice and Benedick (scarily impressive in her ultra-fast rap goddess speech), but also nervous and a bit priggish as Conrade calling Dogberry an ass. An insult by the way which Lila Ahnger’s astonishingly French (baguette-wielding) Dogberry does NOT let go of. She is endlessly hilarious with Dogberry’s absurdities, and is assisted by an equally absurd powerpoint full of unhinged stock images projected against the back of the Barron. Glorious.
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ID: Lila Patterson and Elodie Bain.
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There is some slightly funky doubling going on in this production and I think I love it. Don John, played by Phoenix Carlson, is an impressively pathetic loser emo villain (which is such a good choice! Don John should always be an abject loser!), constantly slouching and looking at their phone, wearing fishnet sleeves and a ‘scary movies’ t-shirt and Scooby-Doo’s collar (!?), but also manages to join the Watch, allowing for a very fun moment of recognition by Borachio and panto-villain excuse-making before they flee. Lila Patterson’s Borachio, meanwhile, is combined with Balthasar, creating a much more complex and ambivalent character who threatens to steal the show. Dealing with Don John Lila plays the manipulator with arch smiles and eyebrow raises, but is also so done with it all, laughing falsely and straight up fully pushing them over. Then she’s performing nervousness before singing a truly exquisite ‘sigh no more’ accompanied by herself (!) on ukulele; then a beautifully heartfelt duet after the interval; and sexy and in control seducing Margaret and pushing her down (this production chooses to stage the deception of Claudia – perfect choice full of exaggerated pantomime emotion); then drunk and lying on Conrade’s lap while incoherently revealing the whole plot; then shocked at the news of Hero’s death; then possibly even repentant. This is the real relatable lesbian rep we needed. Such swagger! Such sass! Such thighs!
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ID: Margo Anderson, Charley Beck, and Libby Mullen.
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I haven’t even talked about the best parts of the play yet (except Lila’s singing)! Somehow they found the time to choreograph extravagant dance scenes into all this (all the rage with Shakespeare nowadays apparently). For the masquerade everyone comes in dancing to Voulez-Vous and clapping along and it’s so slay, and then in the following duologues everyone keeps dancing, creating some very fun flirting moments for especially Borachio through the dance. Then at the end it’s Wannabe by the Spice Girls, with everyone getting a moment in the spotlight and lip-syncing along. This is just so fun and lovely. It’s the second Shakespearean comedy this week that I’ve said is just so fun and lovely, but that shouldn’t detract one bit from how purely fun and lovely it is. I’m so happy right now. This and
AMND last Monday are pretty much my ideals for student Shakespeare productions – maybe there are a few slight mistakes but who cares everyone is so into it and having fun and that makes it also so much fun to watch.
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ID: Alice Polgrean, Chiaka Ajoku, Charley Beck, Libby Mullen, Margo Anderson, and Freddie Crawford.
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The famously punny title of this play is a good way to sum it up I think. For Shakespeare, ‘nothing’ was a homophone with ‘noting’, and this is a production that plays heavily into all the very silly comedy of people eavesdropping and trying to note things, and of mistakenly noting things in hilariously exaggerated ways (especially doing overblown jokes with the masks – I haven’t even mentioned the Batman mask!), but which also does lots of fun interesting things for the audience to note and really engages you. As for the infamous other euphemistic Elizabethan meaning of ‘nothing’, all the actors serve it copiously.
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other erin
