Much Ado About Nothing

troisoiseaux recommended the National Theater Much Ado about Nothing, and as I’m absolutely weak this play I had to see it.

My history with Much Ado about Nothing begins with Kenneth Branagh’s vision in a sun-drenched Italy, all gorgeous people in lovely clothes frolicking about a villa having a glorious time. It continues with Joss Whedon’s black-and-white “I filmed this over a weekend with my actor friends and it shows” version. (Although even that had a flash of brilliance in Beatrice’s “I would eat his heart in the marketplace” speech.)

Also APPARENTLY the Mumford and Sons song “Sigh No More” is largely built of Much Ado about Nothing quotes? I just realized that. A little embarrassing really! No wonder the lyrics are so poetic.

And I’ve spent years intending to see the David Tennant/Catherine Tate version, which perhaps FINALLY I will get around to watching, now that the National Theater reminded me once again just how much I enjoy this play.

The stage is set at the Hotel Messina in the 1920s/30s. The general vibe struck me as twenties, but Beatrice’s costumes are pure 1930s screwball comedy, as befits the ancestress of Rosalind Russell and Claudette Colbert. It’s sharp and stylish, all jazz renditions of Shakespeare’s songs and Benedick hiding under an ice cream cart to eavesdrop on the Duke and Claudio discussing Beatrice’s supposed unrequited love for him. They had an aesthetic and they committed and God I love that.

The acting is also delightful. The mains are all wonderful: Beatrice and Benedick have that delicious “I hate you but maybe because I love you” vibe down, Hero is sweetly charming as a modest maiden in the flush of first love, Claudio is over the top and impulsive that makes it almost possible to forgive his later actions.

But the smaller parts are delicious, too. I loved the attention on Margaret, whose seduction ends up putting Hero in such peril, once Don John convinces Hero’s fiance that it is Hero up their being seduced. Like Hero, Margaret is a giddy girl in love (or lust, anyway), a quick witty young woman who awkwardly raises a hand at Hero’s wedding, trying to get a chance to explain—only for Don John to shove her aside. (Now in real life, one might feel that Margaret should have tried a little harder. But listen, she can only achieve so much against the tyranny of the script.)

And the guards! I must confess that in all the other versions I’ve seen, I found the guards deeply annoying and not comical at all. But somehow here they are charming! And, okay, the head guard is still also a little annoying, he has to be a little annoying to explain why Hero’s father thrusts the guards aside when listening to them could have saved so much trouble, but mostly he’s annoying in a genuinely funny way.

I can’t remember if Much Ado about Nothing is generally accounted one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays,” but it’s always been a problem play for me because it’s so genuinely funny and lighthearted and sweet… except for the central incident of the play, where Claudio repudiates Hero at the altar because he thinks he saw her cheating on him at the window last night. (The girl he saw is, as aforementioned, Margaret being seduced by one of Don John’s minions.) Hero fakes her death, Claudio discovers she was framed and repents, and then they are married, HAPPY END.

Only to a modern audience, this ending doesn’t seem happy at all. He was willing to ruin her life by repudiating her at the altar! Why should she ever go back to him? And because this incident is absolutely central to the play, the moving force of the entire second half, you can’t take it out or even much mitigate it.

The Branagh version doesn’t try to mitigate anything: Claudio actually throws Hero to the ground at the altar. Here’s the Shakespeare play! This scene is what it is, and make what you will of it!

In the National Theater productions so far, this tends to be their attitude toward language that we moderns find objectionable, which I respect. It is what it is, the product of a very different milieu than our own, and it’s silly to bowdlerize it.

However, this production does emphasize Claudio’s youth and impulsiveness. As he ages and settles down, perhaps he may become a better husband than the repudiation scene might lead one to expect. And, to be fair, there’s no evidence that he’s likely to become violently jealous again: Don John had to stage an elaborate ruse to convince Claudio that his angel Hero could possibly be unchaste, because Claudio wouldn’t listen to mere slander.

But goddamn, though! That repudiation at the altar! Love the play, but that scene is always tough, and it will probably always annoy me that Claudio’s “punishment” is perfect happiness in the end.

One thing I did particularly like about this production: the last lines, which are usually the Duke’s, go to Beatrice instead. She’s the one who’s going to invent “brave punishments” for Don John, and he’d better run fast and hard so she never gets the chance, because oh MY is she going to come up with something good to punish the man who nearly ruined her beloved cousin Hero.