Propping up Shakespeare

We haven't written much about props here, however the American Bard Theater Company made me realize how important they can be to a successful play. Like the secondary plots in many Shakespearean comedies, props, though only playing supporting roles, can still make or break a show (see my comment on BAM's "Tempest"). Since "Much Ado About Nothing" is filled with light flirtation, it was apt that the moon appeared via a small pulley which cranked a flimsy but gorgeous cardboard globe into the sky. Like a paper lantern on a spring evening, it swayed, fragile above the stage, honestly confessing to the improvisational nature of off-off broadway theater. Rather than hiding the artifice of theatrical dressings, actors decorated the arbors with swathes of material at different moments in the play to convey the changes in scene and occasion. Sometimes it is precisely this amateur quality of theater that brings its freshness and joy, and of particular note was Andrew Eisenman in the role of Benedick who brought just the right amount of levity to the role to keep us gently amused.

Much Ado About Nothing

There is a distinction in poetry between poems that rhyme and poems where simply the last word of each line (or every other line or whatever) rhyme. Rhyming poems, done well, have meter and rhythm and music. Poems where the last syllable of the last word of each line happen to share a syllable feel forced.

That's the way I feel about most productions of Shakespeare that are draped in non-Elizabethan costume and stage set. It's as if the director is adding a dash of self-conscious "edge" and shoving the play into an idea that they think good Shakespeare does.

All of which is to say I groaned a little bit when Don Pedro, Claudio and Benedick show up in Messina clothed in soldier's dress circa 1939, and somewhere in the distance a grammophone unwinds. But the American Bard Theater Company's production of "Much Ado About Nothing," actually used the period set to good effect. The playbill told us that the men were returning to Italy at the end of the Spanish Civil War. At the end of the play, Don John, the evil half-brother has absconded, but is returning "with armed men."

But the wedding feast goes on.

"Think not on him till to-morrow," Benedick says, "Strike up, pipers."
They dance on, oblivious to the disaster that will soon interrupt their happy garden party.