Reviewed by James
Karas
When in Rome, you should, to coin a
phrase, do as the Romans do. In the summer you should go to the Globe Theatre
and watch productions of plays by William Shakespeare.
No, I am not mixing up my cities.
Rome has a replica of the Elizabethan Globe Theatre where for the eleventh year
in a row there is a summer season of plays by Shakespeare and other
playwrights.
I caught a fine production of Much
Ado About Nothing or Molto rumore per nulla directed by
Loredana Scaramella.
Scaramella captures the comedy,
both high and low, and gives a very lively accounting of the play. Mauro
Santopietro and Barbara Moselli make an energetic Benedick and Beatrice. Fausto
Cabra as Claudio looks and acts like a dunce and, of course, he is. Claudio
does come through in the end because we need a wedding and a happy ending.
Leonato (Daniele Faccioti) is
gracious as the Governor of Messina and passionately furious as the father of
Hero (Mimosa Campironi), the bride-to-be of Claudio who is accused of conduct
unbecoming the night before her wedding.
The show was stolen by Carlo Ragone
who played the inimitable Dogberry and made something significant of Balthasar.
As Dogberry he is dressed vilely and has hair that looks like an oil slick. He
has one leg shorter than the other and hops around the stage as he gives his
orders. Hilarious.
As Balthasar he sings and directs a
three-man band and elicits laughter while doing justice to the songs including
a few falsetto shrieks. Quite a performance by an actor who seems to have
comedy in his bones.
The rest of the cast did fine work
but a few comments about the directing are a propos.
For some reason Scaramella has
decided that the cast need microphones strapped around their heads. That meant
we heard all the characters through the loud speaker closest to us. In a small
theatre this seemed unnecessary and at the beginning of the performance, annoying.
You get used to it after a while.
The action took place all too often
in the front of the stage as if the sides did not exist. This is surely an
oversight. The Globe is an oval-shaped theatre and the people sitting on the sides
should not be ignored.
The most distinct aspect of Fabiana
Di Marco’s set design was the use of sheets on clothes lines. They seemed
pointless at the beginning but they came in handy as poor but comic covers for
Benedick and Beatrice when they were being fooled into believing that they were
madly in love.
There is considerable room for
physical humour in the play and Scaramella provided some but I felt that there
was room for more and the sheets were not enough.
The Silvano Toti Globe Theatre was
built in less than four months in 2003 in the Villa Borghese and holds 1250
people of whom 420 sit on the floor. These are the yardlings of Shakespeare’s
Globe but unlike them who must stand throughout the performance, the Romans are
seated on the ground. In London, the actors frequently play down to the
yardlings to great effect. In Rome in the production that I saw, they were
largely ignored.
The current season runs from July
to September and is dedicated entirely to Shakespeare. Love’s Labour’s Lost runs
from September 11 to 18 and there is a Shakespeare Fest on September 19, 20
and 21, 2014 to end the season. In Rome,
if you please.
______
Much Ado About Nothing (Molto rumore per nulla) by William Shakespeare ran from August 22 to
September 7, 2014 at the Silvano Toti Globe Theatre, Villa Borghese, Rome. www.globetheatreroma.com
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