NEWS ARCHIVES

THERE IS MUCH ADO ABOUT NEWMARKET

July 21, 2004 - Review by Richard Ouzounian, Theatre Critic, the Toronto Star

Sometimes a show just feels right and when that happens, it can override a multitude of small objections.

That's the case with the production of Much Ado About Nothing, currently delighting audience on Fairy Lake in Newmarket as part of the sixth season for the Resurgence Theatre Company at the York Shakespeare Festival.

Director David Ferry has created a reading of the play that somehow manages to be faithful and outrageous at the same time.

Let me explain.

Shakespeare's comedy features those two witty romantic adversaries, Beatrice and Benedick, in a story of love, hate, betrayal and redemption. It features everything from saucy banter to slapstick highjinks, with a side journey into nearly tragic territory.

It's a deeply rewarding play when done properly and this production delivers almost all of its riches intact.

Ferry has unapologetically moved it from Renaissance Italy to the Basque region of Spain in the late 1930s, during the period of the Spanish Civil War.

It's a canny choice, which allows the play's important theme of "love in a time of war" to flourish, while providing us with a readily accessible base for some zippy comedy.

In the more than capable hands of Camilla Scott and Paul Eves, Beatrice and Benedick become bantering lovers from a screwball comedy. Think of Rosalind Russell and Cary Grant in His Girl Friday and you wouldn't be far off the mark.

It also gives us the benefit of performances such as Geoff Pounsett's winningly empathetic Don Pedro, just the kind of enlightened gentleman who would have enlisted to fight the rise of fascism.

With a little bit of a twist, we wind up as well with Irene Poole's provocative portrait of Dona Juanita. Yes, it's Shakespeare's villain, Don John, turned here into a hot-blooded woman scorned. One of the most motiveless characters in the Bardic canon suddenly becomes a pivotal figure - and a fascinating one.

Purists would carp at Ferry's trans-sexing of the role, but frankly, it helps the production as a whole and isn't that the most important thing?

You could also carp at some of his attempts to update the jokes. "I had my good wit out of the 'Hundred Merry Tales,'" now becomes "I got my jokes from Moe, Larry and Curly," while allusions to Esquire magazine and the like also proliferate.

But some of them work well and the ones that don't go by so quickly you needn't get too irate.

What is a bit more upsetting are Ferry's attempts to ghostwrite Shakespeare, where chunks of dialogue undreamt of by the Swan of Avon are inserted to make things "clearer" or "more interesting." These are a problem we could well do without.

The comedy is - wonder of wonders - actually funny! Stephen Guy-McGrath is a preening little peacock of a Dogberry and Brendan Gail's Verges is a virtuoso exercise in cross-eyed-hilarity.

The serious side of the plot also works well, thanks to the machinations of Poole's villainess and sturdy work from Don Allison as the wronged father Leonato.

In the leading roles, Scott and Eves score all the necessary points without turning the show into a star-tripping ego-fest.

Eves has a nicely flustered style that takes some of the swagger out of Benedick's more misogynistic utterances and Scott has found the necessary heart under the wise-cracking brittle shell of Beatrice.

The theatre itself is pleasant, on the shores of a picturesque lake and the whole operation exudes a sense of unforced friendliness.

Best of all, the audience (most of whom I bet have never read or seen the play before) easily followed Shakespeare's script, in its dark and light moments, and had a fine time doing it.

In the end, isn't that what it's all about?

© 2004 Richard Ouzounian, The Toronto Star. All rights reserved.

Contact Richard Ouzounian at the Toronto Star for permission to reprint this review.