High j inks
Patrick Carnegy
T he brilliant artifice of the wit in Much Ado is a dance over an abyss, and yet it needs firm ground if its steps are not to falter, What draws us to the play is delight in its exquisitely protracted verbal fencing between Beatrice and Benedick, played in Gregory Doran's new production by Harriet Walter and Nicholas le Prevost. Their sallies can bear a wealth of interpretation but need a context that will make light of the absurdities in the plotting.
Doran and his designer Stephen Brimson Lewis go the whole way with the Sicilian thing. Leonato's sun-baked terracotta villa rises up impressively behind Messina's town square; dogs bark, the famous marionettes are put through their paces, ragazzi tear about and bands strike up.
The period is quite precisely May 1936 when Mussolini's troops returned in triumph from Ethiopia (thus injecting new meaning into Claudia's naughty joke about being prepared to marry anyone but an 'Ethiope'). So, yes, it's once again that fascist milieu beloved of today's directors, though refreshing in that ominous political overtones are absent. High spirits prevail. Dogberry and his Watch are the kind of idiotic law-enforcement officers cherished in any happy-go-lucky society. Don Pedro and his men look as though they could be in the army for the uniforms. The only discord of any consequence is that between Beatrice and Benedick. Against this, of course, has to be set the machinations of the blackshirt baddy Don John and his accomplices, but in truth they're rather like Herr Hick and his crew in 'Alto 'Alto, cranking the action along and really just there to wind up the fun.
This, then, is the kind of verismo staging that sends you back to the Sicilian storyteller Giovanni Verga and Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. There is, however, a small but not insignificant problem in that Shakespeare's characters are not hot-blooded Sicilians but Brits, far better at playing with emotions in words than living them through. What you've got here is Shakespeare's characters as tourists abroad. Not that this really matters unless you've been seduced by the Sicilian milieu and are puzzled why everyone's so fearfully English.
Harriet Walter begins promisingly enough in macho-Sicilian style by straddling the Despatch Rider's motorcycle (a role known neither to Quarto nor Folio). Later, in fuchsia-pink and with flowers in her hair, she has a stab at Carmen. Most disconcerting, though, is that for the crucial scene when defences tumble and cupid triumphs, she appears in appalling baggy trousers and with a sun-hat slung on her back as though she were Cherie in Tuscany. But of course it's the words that count and Walter puts them across with her characteristically sharp relish. When Benedick remarks that they are 'too wise to woo peaceably' she drops her jaw to flash her vixen's teeth. Doubtless, the impossible Cherie outfit simply signals that the folly of love has momentarily gained the upper hand.
A touch of frustration is evident in Walter's engaging performance as she's getting very little sexual energy back from le Prevost's Benedick. She's so fired up that Hero (Kirsten Parker) has to hose her down, while this Benedick is a bachelor almost beyond ignition. Prevost puts him across as a sardonically dry stalwart of the officer's mess. Settled down with his whisky to deplore Claudio's infatuation with Hero, he can't help twitching as he contemplates the kind of woman who might make a fool of him too. He is measured and not fantastical in his sparring with Beatrice. Even when they've declared their loves, he quickly retrieves his military bearing and brushes her hand from his shoulder as he departs to kill Claudio. You quake to think of their future.
Other sexual politics are also at work. Clive Wood's Prince, Don Pedro, is a commandant with a weakness for his junior fellow-officer Claudio (John Hopkins) verging on the inadvisable. One senses that the resonantly masculine Wood (who should have been playing Antony rather than Enobarbus in the Antony and Cleopatra running in repertory with Much Ado), was less than perfectly in tune with this camp perspective on Pedro.
This is a Much Ado rich in high jinks and vivid theatricality, but Doran eventually gives full measure to the darker side of the play. The transition from sunshine to shadow during Hero's cruelly aborted wedding is stunningly effective. And here Gary Waldhorn's impressive performance as Leonato, Hero's father, is crucial. In a chilling instant his urbanity and good humour yield to an anger and thirst for vengeance of truly Sicilian intensity. Much Ado may be a comedy, but Doran is surely right to insist we shouldn't forget the less than cheerful vision at its core.
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