Seattlest To "Much Ado": You're Loved
Laugh-out-loud funny, immediate, with stabs of poignancy, the Seattle Shakespeare Company’s production of Much Ado About Nothing (now through June 24, Thursdays - Sundays, at the Seattle Center House) seduced us with a remarkably strong, appealing cast. Thanks to the shrewd direction of the Children’s Theatre’s Rita Giomi, Shakespeare's comedy was dust-free, lucid, and vigorous in its attack on vain displays of male honor.
Look, we're not the only ones who were smitten by the play's lack of "Shakespearean" accents or other posturing. So get thee thitherest. Tickets are $27 - $30, with special student/senior prices.
Much Ado is the one with Beatrice (Stephanie Shine) and Benedick (Paul Morgan Stetler), the Hepburn-and-Tracy of their day. Both are a little too quick-witted for their own good and set in their ways, despite a simmering attraction. Here Beatrice is a middle-aged woman with her own mind, embittered by past romantic slights, and Benedick is a case of arrested development, the older guy keeping company with younger men because all of his friends have married and settled down.
Their herky-jerky romance is balanced by the drama of brave Claudio (MJ Sieber) and lovely Hero's (Alexandra Tavares) youthful passion, with its life-or-death zigs and zags. Sieber's Claudio is a boyish hothead, puffed up with his battlefield exploits, and while Tavares' Hero is certainly believable as the local dark-haired beauty who catches his eye, her mixture of playfulness and confidence is truly winning. As her father Leonato, Gordon Carpenter is all sunshine, the loving kind of father who raises a princess, but he's not afraid to completely lose it, spewing his rage at Hero when the family's honor is impugned.
Appearing in his own reality is constable Dogberry (Todd Jefferson Moore), the kind of Shakespearean character that begs for his own spin-off (like Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern). A malaprop-manufacturing machine, Dogberry is impervious to any drama except that having to do with The Dogberry Chronicles. Moore scales angular new heights with his Dogberry in the company Don Darryl Rivera, his shorter, rounder, squeakier sidekick.
Craig Wollam’s frugal set suggests a rustic Italian villa’s ambiance without actually presenting one (and splits the stage in two, very useful in a play where people are so hasty in taking sides). The costumes by Heidi Ganser are bright and lively -- actually, a bit too much for soldiers fresh from war.
Photo by John Ulman
