MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING – REVIEW OF 2023 STRATFORD FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas 

Go to Stratford and see Much Ado About Nothing. It is the funniest production of the play you are likely to find with a director and a cast that are simply outstanding.

You remember Much Ado. It is the one about Beatrice and Benedick, whose verbal sparring and vehement denials of any attraction to each other, and their friends’ attempts to bring them together and lead them to the altar - and leave the audience with their heads laughed off. It is also about Hero and Claudio, the young lovers whose marriage is interrupted at the altar by evil lies. And yes, this is the play with one of Shakespeare’s funniest characters and the tormentor of the English language, Constable Dogberry.

There is no doubt that the greatest credit for this production goes to director Chris Abraham. This is vibrant, inventive, imaginative, fast moving, and hilarious theatre. Abraham can evoke laughter and merriment out of almost anything. Abraham makes shameless use of the audience to generate laughs. For example, Benedick can’t take his boot off. He steps up to an audience member who helps him. He wants to read the lyrics of his song but needs help. He gives a piece of paper to an audience member who holds it up. Benedick starts to read but the paper is upside down. He turns it over and gets roars of laughter.

Maev Beaty (left) as Beatrice and Graham Abbey as 

Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by David Hou. 

After their friends’ underhanded and funny attempts to convince the two that the other loves him/her, Beatrice goes to invite Benedick in for dinner. He thinks she really loves him; she does not yet. He displays peacock-like male bravado including stripping his shirt off to show his muscles. She approaches him and plucks a hair from his chest. Hilarious.

Abbey and Beaty give masterly comic performances as they act and react to each other. Both have vocal and physical agility as anti-lovers, reluctant lovers and of course as wooers, subliminal or otherwise. Beaty flails her arms and uses her body in a stunning performance that, along with others in the cast, puts the audience in the palms of her hands.

We all wait for the appearance of constable Dogberry (Josue Laboucane) with a troupe of village idiots. Laboucane’s Dogberry is flamboyant, fearless, self-assured, not-too-bright and, of course, a master of malapropisms non-pareil. He is accompanied by a full complement of misfits who are hilarious. All the characters in the production speak in an Ontario accent and thus we do not get the difference in social class between Dogberry’s crowd and the aristocrats.

Austin Eckert (centre left) as Claudio and Allison Edwards-Crewe
 (centre right) as Hero with members of the company. Photo by David Hou.

The subplot of Much Ado involves the wooing and marriage of Claudio (Austin Eckert) and Hero (Allison Edwards-Crewe). They are text-book lovers and about to be joined in forever-blissful matrimony. But the evil Prince Don John (Michael Blake) and his confederates allege that Hero was unfaithful the night before her wedding and Claudio dumps her on the altar. She drops “dead”. There are not too many laughs in that except for the investigation and superb police work by Dogberry and Co. but Abraham squeezes some, nonetheless.

The straight characters and backdrop for the action, the host Leonato (Patrick McManus), and the visiting Prince Don Pedro (Andre Sills) are played with exemplary professionalism by the actors.

Abraham strikes a boisterous and joyous atmosphere from the start of the main plot. There is music, singing, and dancing. There are 3 musicians on stage, George Meanwell playing violin, guitar and accordion, Jonathan Rowsell playing tuba and recorder, and Stephan Szczesniak on percussion and jaw harp and they provided a significand addition to the great joyfulness of the production. Thomas Ryder Payne composed the music.

In addition to involving the audience for the sake of laughter, Abraham did not hesitate to interject phrases. “This is opening night: says Abbey/Benedick” for example. But there is a more serious interpolation. The program announces that there is “additional text by Erin Shields.”  

What?

Erin Shields is given about a quarter of the page that has Shakespeare’s biographical blurb in the program. We applaud her accomplishments. She tells us that she consulted about half a dozen Shakespearean experts and received “invaluable feedback during the development of this new text.” She clearly took her assignment seriously.

Her “new text” is intended, I presume, to give Much Ado a feminist point of view. Shakespeare wrote in the sixteenth century and reflected the moral world of his times. The views of marriage, chastity and social classes reflect that world. This is shown in the first limes of the play when the messenger reporting on the war that just finished is asked “how many gentlemen have you lost.” Not people, not common soldiers, but “gentlemen.” The comforting reply is few and no one of the higher classes. What matters is class and not human beings.  

I can’t pinpoint chapter and verse the additions to Shakespeare’s text made by Shields. As we are shuffling to get comfortable in our seats for the play to begin, Maev Beaty recites some lines about “Why does a woman stare into a glass” as we see a woman standing on the balcony looking into a mirror.

Near the end of the play when Claudio and Hero are reconciled and about to get married, Hero has a few things to say. What if she had met Mr. Right before she knew Claudio? What if she had, take a deep breath, sex with him? Was her chastity and chastity itself the prime possession of a woman? We are talking about another world with different views from ours.

The word “Nothing” in the title is clearly a pun. The meaning of the word “nothing” or noting as it was pronounced in Elizabethan England has attracted considerable commentary. “Noting” could also mean female genitalia. Is Shakespeare being ironic about the obsession with chastity in his time? That is an interesting subject for scholars to examine not something that should come as “additional text” in a production. 

In any event, it made a small difference for most people and it did not detract from this fabulous production.

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Much Ado About Nothing by William Shakespeare continues until October 27, 2023 at the Festival Theatre of the Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario. www.stratfordfestival.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press