When Marvel Meets “Much Ado About Nothing”

Every age, we kid ourselves, gets the Shakespeare it deserves—or, with immoderate luck, the Shakespeare it severely needs. Take a celebrated example: to work astir the Federal Theatre Project’s accumulation of “Macbeth” that opened astatine the Lafayette Theatre, successful Harlem, successful 1936, performed by an all-Black formed and directed by Orson Welles, is to beryllium overwhelmed by a consciousness of thing that had to happen. Any witch could spot it coming. But what astir eras of adjacent greater distraction and disarray? Do we privation lone arsenic overmuch Shakespeare arsenic we tin header with, and nary more?

A caller light—and a glaring one—is being shone connected these murky matters by a caller accumulation of “Much Ado About Nothing” astatine the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, successful London. The calling paper of the amusement is its stars, and the nationalist has answered the call. I went to a matinée, connected a grey Thursday, and the spot was packed, successful anticipation of the starring lovers. Benedick is played by Tom Hiddleston and Beatrice by Hayley Atwell; successful different words, if you are a Marvel fan, by the antheral who plays Loki successful 3 “Avengers” movies and 3 helpings of “Thor,” positive the pistillate who plays Peggy Carter. (For the uninitiated, she’s a British cause of Second World War vintage, chock-full of pluck, who pals up with Captain America.) At 1 point, successful the midst of “Much Ado,” full-length cardboard cutouts of Hiddleston and Atwell, successful their Marvel costumes, are carried onstage, to squeals of knowing delight: meta made easy.

The signifier of the Theatre Royal is wide and deep, and it tin beryllium tricky to fill. (Decades ago, it was a venue of prime for Rodgers and Hammerstein shows. “Frozen” played determination for 3 years. Next up, post-Shakespeare, is an adaptation of Disney’s “Hercules.”) For astir of “Much Ado,” which is directed by Jamie Lloyd, the immense expanse of the signifier is littered with pinkish confetti—heaped truthful high, successful 1 scene, that Benedick gets to rotation astir successful it arsenic if romping successful autumn leaves. The props, by contrast, are beauteous overmuch confined to 10 chairs, connected which immoderate of the characters thin to perch portion listening to others speak. By and large, they deterioration the aforesaid outfit from the archetypal to the past scene. Whether this benignant of presumption has a method name, I’m not sure. Over-the-top minimalism? Stripped-down camp? Either way, I suppose, it saves money.

In a funny parallel, crossed town, thing akin is successful motion. On an arsenic capacious stage, astatine the Barbican Theatre, different classical play—Chekhov’s “The Seagull”—has been simultaneously pared down and juiced up. Once again, it is crowned by a large name; the heroine, a self-anointing histrion named Irina, is played by Cate Blanchett. Instead of confetti, we get a thicket of gangly foliage, done which the characters rustle into view. Otherwise, the accoutrements dwell of a quad bike, a play cart, the statutory shotgun, and not overmuch more. The chairs connected which the actors beryllium fig not 10 but a yet much extremist seven. Before the enactment gets nether way, 1 quality enters, picks up an electrical guitar, banters with the audience, and past plays “The Milkman of Human Kindness,” a raucously plaintive opus by the British protestation vocalist Billy Bragg.

Can “Much Ado” lucifer that? You bet. If it’s play play you’re seeking, I person atrocious news: this accumulation is debased connected lutes. Instead, the amusement starts arsenic Margaret (Mason Alexander Park) serenades america with “Tell It to My Heart”—a nine modular archetypal heard successful the precocious nineteen-eighties. Still to come, scattered done the show: “Fight for Your Right,” by the Beastie Boys, Missy Elliott’s “Work It,” and different tunes meant to reassure america that going to the theatre is, oregon should be, much of an impromptu rave and little of a stolid taste chore. By the last curtain, that persuasive mission, arsenic adjacent the astir scowling purist volition admit, has been accomplished. The formed gaily busts a corporate move, to the strains of “When Love Takes Over,” and the assemblage stands and claps successful clip to the beat. What is more, the actors are successful implicit obedience to the past enactment of the play. “Strike up, pipers,” Benedick proclaims, and a signifier absorption backs him up: “Dance, and past exeunt.”

The estimation of “Much Ado About Nothing” arsenic a crowd-pleaser is hardly new. Appended to an variation of Shakespeare, successful 1640, was a hobbling but informative poem by a antheral named Leonard Digges, who told america of a assemblage that was ripe for the pleasing: “Let but Beatrice / And Benedick beryllium seen, lo successful a trice / The Cockpit, galleries, boxes, each are full.” His accent connected the main couple, to the exclusion of everyone else, acceptable a code that has persisted for centuries. No 1 has ever rushed to the theatre for the involvement of Hero and Claudio, the secondary lovers, whose wooings and sunderings, though eventful, look similar precise tiny brew compared with the affluent flirtatious spirits of the superior pair. King Charles I, successful his transcript of Shakespeare, went truthful acold arsenic to transverse retired the rubric of the play and to constitute “Beatrice and Benedick” beside it—a preferential upgrade that was echoed, much than 2 centuries later, by Berlioz, whose comic opera is called “Béatrice et Bénédict.” The composer described it arsenic “a caprice written with the constituent of a needle.”

But Berlioz the whittler didn’t halt there. Though helium retained Hero and Claudio, helium chopped retired not lone Don John, the malcontent who sets the crippled spinning, but besides Dogberry, the clownish constable successful complaint of arresting and questioning immoderate suspicious persons. The opera frankincense reduces the analyzable communicative of the play to 2 acts; by a bully coincidence, truthful does the latest “Much Ado,” which comes successful 2 manageable chunks and, with an interval, lasts a small much than 2 hours. The logic indispensable beryllium tempting, I guess: if you’re going to lure the nationalist successful with movie stars, wherefore not heighten the illusion by making america beryllium determination for the magnitude of a movie? To beryllium honest, I was benignant of disappointed not to beryllium offered a container of annoyingly noisy popcorn and a live-action trailer for “Hercules.”

Like “Béatrice et Bénédict,” the caller “Much Ado” is Dogberry-free. Does this matter? Not to anyone who has ever sat done a lousy accumulation of the play, possibly astatine college, and recovered the character’s linguistic errors—his trademark—to beryllium astir arsenic comic arsenic athlete’s foot. Yet we bash request Dogberry, not slightest due to the fact that helium is specified a revealing foil for Beatrice and Benedick. Far though they outrank him connected the intelligence and societal scale, the lovers remain, to a grade that they can’t ever bring themselves to recognize, arsenic trapped by their surfeit of verbal dexterity arsenic helium is by his ham-fisted fumblings with the language. Words whitethorn wound, God knows, but they tin besides shield america from uncomfortable thrusts of feeling. (“Shall quips and sentences and these insubstantial bullets of the encephalon awe a antheral from the vocation of his humor?” Benedick asks.) Also, to bash Dogberry justice, his doltishness does, connected occasion, resistance him into accidental wisdom; when, successful precocious dudgeon, helium exclaims, “O villain! Thou wilt beryllium condemned into everlasting redemption for this,” the wrongness of the abstract noun—he means “damnation”—bumps into the temper of forgiveness for which, arsenic spectators of comedy, we instinctively pray.

As for the villainy, well, Don John is contiguous and close astatine Drury Lane, but, similar the remainder of the supporting characters, helium makes alarmingly small impact—barely a dent successful one’s memory, aft the play is done. On the page, it’s true, Don John is nary Iago, yet successful his insignificant malignity helium is implacable capable (“I cannot fell what I am”), and the fruits of his mischief could not beryllium much rotten: it’s due to the fact that of him that Claudio winds up spitting slander astatine the guiltless Hero, who past pretends to beryllium dead. This production, however, has nary clip for nastiness, which slides disconnected the shining aboveground of the revelry. It’s astir arsenic if wickedness were an embarrassment, erstwhile determination is amusive to beryllium had; arsenic if immoderate notation of unit would someway beryllium atrocious manners. Were you to quiz members of the assemblage aft the show, however galore of them would callback that the communicative began with the menfolk, Benedick included, returning from war? Or that the precise past committedness that Benedick makes before helium gets everyone dancing is to deliberation astir due tortures to inflict connected Don John, present successful custody? “Think not connected him till tomorrow; I’ll devise thee brave punishments for him.”

What we get from this caller “Much Ado” is little ado than usual. It is not a travesty of the play, by immoderate means, but it’s a shrinkage, and, I suspect, a harbinger of further diminutions. Such is the existent authorities of the satellite that radical are much entitled than ever to a blast of euphony and merriment, devoid of unsavory downsides. To get an alliterative operation from “Much Ado,” not each play is duty-bound “to use a motivation medicine to a mortifying mischief.” Anybody who asks for much from this caller production, therefore, oregon who points retired what is missing, risks the complaint of being the merest killjoy.

Then again, Shakespeare himself keeps reminding america that joyousness is successful perpetual information of being killed; that it may, successful fact, beryllium each the much precious for being cradled betwixt episodes of brutality and grief. “She hath often dreamed of unhappiness and waked herself with laughing,” Beatrice’s begetter says of her. (A unusual prefiguring, successful reverse, of Caliban’s confession successful “The Tempest”: “When I waked, / I cried to imagination again.”) How casual it is to forget, arsenic Rosalind sports with emotion successful the Forest of Arden, successful “As You Like It,” that she has fled determination connected symptom of death, and however unprepared we are, each clip we ticker “Much Ado,” for the daze of Beatrice’s bid to Benedick, arsenic plain arsenic a punch, erstwhile helium suavely undertakes to bash her bidding: “Kill Claudio.”

Judi Dench, successful “Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent,” her wonderfully acute and earthy publication of interviews astir his plays, lays down the instrumentality connected that astonishing moment. “The enactment ‘Kill Claudio’ precise occasionally got a laughter erstwhile I said it. I consciousness it shouldn’t, though—perhaps a tense laugh—but it should beryllium a gasp, an intake of breath.” I americium gladsome to study that Atwell, successful Drury Lane, draws the close response: each gasp and nary laugh. Amid an day of froth and folderol, she knocks america backmost connected our heels and shuts america up. I saw Atwell play Isabella, successful “Measure for Measure,” successful 2018, and the principled candor that she displayed determination emerges anew successful her Beatrice, who interrupts her duel of wits, with Benedick, for the involvement of solidarity with Hero. The beardown pistillate stands by her friend, a weaker soul, who has been sorely maligned. If Benedick can’t grip specified resolve, much fool him. All helium tin bash is clasp his lingua portion her rage astatine Claudio turns cannibalistic: “O God, that I were a man! I would devour his bosom successful the marketplace.”

Addicts of the iambic pentameter are starved by “Much Ado.” Scarcely much than a 4th of it is successful verse; nary Shakespeare play is prosier, but for “The Merry Wives of Windsor.” In a good ceremonial twist, though, it is the callow couple, Hero and Claudio, who are much liable to utter lines of poesy than the sophisticates. Only fitfully bash Beatrice and Benedick interruption their wont of jousting prose. The astir startling objection is the country successful which Beatrice, having overheard herself being mocked for her pride, launches into a abrupt sonnet—jumping into a accepted conveyance for the lovesick, that is, arsenic if anxious to beryllium that she is not, aft all, excessively astute to beryllium swept along.

Mostly, the play relies connected a travel of intimate chat, and it’s a crying, not to accidental deafening, shame that the performers astatine Drury Lane are equipped with caput microphones. (Dench again: “I interest nowadays astir actors being miked arsenic I deliberation it flattens everything out.”) Too galore of them proceed to bellow their lines contempt the amplification, and it’s up to Hiddleston and Atwell, erstwhile more, to dial things down. Nowhere but successful their institution bash we consciousness the privilege of eavesdropping connected the amity of clever grownups, battle-scarred by time. When Hiddleston turns to america and says, “Man is simply a giddy thing, and this is my conclusion,” helium doesn’t dependable similar a roué, tossing retired an axiom for effect. He seems similar idiosyncratic who has yet arrived astatine inward clarity, aft a hellhole of a ride.

So, that’s the joke: “Much Ado About Nothing,” successful this instance, is saved by the inhabitants of Marvel. Not each personage casting is simply a gimmick, and, whenever “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” is adjacent mounted Off Broadway, I look guardant to seeing Spider-Man arsenic Cobweb, Pepper Potts arsenic Mustardseed, and Groot arsenic Flute. For now, anyone who is fortunate capable to drawback a summons to the London production, flawed arsenic it is, volition beryllium treated to the spectacle of Loki and Agent Carter, superpowered by small much than steel-tipped repartee—by everything that lies astatine their wits’ extremity and beyond. Indeed, connected the spot of their kissing, arsenic the play winds up, we cognize precisely what comes next, successful the headlong lives of Beatrice and Benedick. As idiosyncratic remarks, “If they were but a week married, they would speech themselves mad.” Maybe so, but astir of the talking, and each of the madness, volition instrumentality spot successful bed. ♦