Title: Much Ado About Nothing
Directed By: Josie Rourke
Run: Over, but you can purchase a digital download from Digital Theater. I honestly recommend holding out for a dvd; I've had a terrible experience with Digital Theater.
If you liked: fourth series of Doctor Who, Shakespeare

I really hate that poster. Come on, designer, it's a COMEDY! There is absolutely nothing of Beatrice or Benedick's personality in that thing.

But this isn't about that poster. It's about the play. The play, the play. The play's the thing. Overall, I really enjoyed it (I've watched it several times since purchasing), though despite my passionate love for Catherine Tate and my warm feelings for David Tennant, I think overall I prefer the 1993 Emma Thompson version. At some point, I'll probably write a comparison of the two versions, because I think they made some fascinatingly different artistic decisions, but that point is not now.

Catherine Tate and David Tennant have an absolutely marvelous chemistry together, and it fills my heart with joy to watch them interact as Beatrice and Benedick. Tennant is absolutely fabulous as Benedick - pretty much every single line was pitch perfect.

Much to my surprise, I was not as enthralled with Tate's performance. This is not necessarily a criticism - overall, the entire production put a heavy emphasis on the physical comedy, a comedic genre I really don't much like. In the scene where Beatrice overhears Hero and Ursula talking about Benedick, they have this gag where Beatrice gets attached to a painter's rope and is pulled up into the air while her cousin and maid pretend not to notice. I appreciated the absurdity, but it didn't do much for me. The stress of the stunt also pulled Tate out of character - not during it, but afterwards, there was a good thirty seconds where she was simply pulling herself together again and reacting to the audience's applause, which made her eventual return to character feel extremely contrived. I felt that a lot of her moments of physical comedy came at the expense of her character, honestly, and that she was at her best when simply engaging in the wit of the words. But it clearly worked for the recording audience, so your mileage may vary.

I loved the more modern setting and how they updated Shakespeare's original songs. Since discovering the soundtrack on Spotify, I've been listening to it more or less nonstop.

However, the more modern setting also made Hero and Claudio's storyline that much more painful for me to watch, because it's that much harder to write off Claudio and Leonato's violence as the product of a bygone era. And I really, really don't understand why Rourke (and other directors, to be fair) choose to have both Claudio and Leonato be so physically violent to Hero after she is accused of having had sex. The slut-shaming in the text itself is bad enough, but to compound that with Claudio trying to hit her and Leonato at several points try literally to kill her makes it absolutely impossible for me to see her marriage as a happy ending.

Especially considering what Rourke did with Don John and the Prince's relationship. Textually, they are brothers with a troubled relationship. In the 1993 movie, you see the Prince almost bend over backwards to demonstrate to his half-brother that he has forgiven him, but in this production, the Prince clearly harbors a great deal of anger and resentment of Don John still. I found this a fascinating choice, but it also greatly complicates the story. If the Prince hates his brother as much as he seems to, why on earth does he believe him so quickly when Don John claims Hero is a cheating slut? There is absolutely no sense that the Prince disbelieves Don John but agrees to see his so-called "proof"; even though he says "if", he very clearly believes that Hero is guilty as charged even before "witnessing" her encounter. The alacrity with which he believed his despised brother, and the venom with which he planned to humiliate a good friend's daughter, deeply troubled me.

My feelings regarding Don John are mixed. The Prince's venom makes him a touch more sympathetic - who wouldn't hate a brother that so clearly hates him? - but there was an implication that he was gay, and I am just so fucking sick of the gay villain. So sick. (I feel I should also point out that the cast was entirely white. Come on, Britain, you have a host of fabulous actors of color. Use them!) Especially since gender nonconformity was played for laughs in so much of the play.

I say all of the above as though I disapprove, but other than Don John's implied queerness, I don't disapprove of the choices made. They trouble me, but I think an argument can be made that they're supposed to be troubling. There is a real kind of darkness to this production - the characters are much more rough and raw than in the 1993 film. Beatrice and Benedick don't simply snip at each other out of habit; they each very clearly harbor deep wounds and anger from their ill-defined past relationship. I loved the moment when Beatrice leaned over and almost growled "I know you of old" and Benedick rips off his sunglasses so he can glare at her and have it out, but she's already walked away. It then makes sense that they would be so easily tricked, because their feelings for each other are still so raw.

The Prince and Beatrice's relationship was also really interesting, and his proposal one of my absolute favorite scenes. In the film, Denzel Washington seemed incredibly sweet and earnest when he proposed to Emma Thompson, and she used her wit to let him down gently, and after that he seemed completely over her. Tate's Beatrice is not near so wise - her first reaction is to laugh, thinking it's a joke, and when she realizes it's not, she tries to help him save face by turning it into a joke but she clearly feels awkward and terrible and he's doing his best to laugh it off but he is clearly heartbroken and he carries that with him through the rest of the play, even to the end, which I loved. I feel like he wanted to set Beatrice and Benedick up just to watch Beatrice reject Benedick, to prove to himself that she couldn't love any man and it wasn't that she couldn't love him. And while he is happy for her and Benedick at the end, he is still hurting too. While everyone else at the wedding dances, he stands off to the side, smoking alone.

There was also a scene when Claudio tries to kill himself after learning about Hero's "death", which made me roll my eyes because I hate Claudio and, no offense to this particular actor, but I hated him more in this production than I have in any other production ever. And in the final wedding scene, when Claudio is supposed to marry Hero's "cousin", everyone is dressed in black for mourning. Hero's forgiveness of Claudio and their marriage does not erase the visual memory of what Claudio's earlier actions have done.

Another interesting choice they made, and which contributed to the darkness of the play, was changing Leonato's brother to his wife. We therefore witness two marriages (as opposed to weddings) in the play - Leonato and Imogen, and Ursula and her husband. Neither are happy ones. Ursula is a tired, nagging wife who doesn't enjoy her husband's antics at the masquerade, and Leonato and Imogen don't seem to like each other very much at all. When Leonato jokes "My wife has often told me so [that Hero is his daughter]", Imogen shoots him a hurt glare rather than a laugh. Moreover, the impact of Leonato's speech after the first failed wedding is drastically changed when it's a speech to his wife rather than to his brother. It is understandable that a grieving father would tell his brother "YOU CAN'T POSSIBLE UNDERSTAND HOW I FEEL!!!!!!! IT'S NOT YOUR DAUGHTER!", but to say that sort of thing to his wife is reprehensible. Imogen probably understands far better than him the impact that this kind of accusation would have on Hero, but Leonato thinks only of himself. He is even less likable than Don John, which is quite a feat. (Though, to be fair, I've always loved Don John, and he almost ties with Beatrice as my favorite character in this place. This scene is one of my favorites in any play.)

With two such unhappy marriages as role models, is it any wonder that Beatrice disdains the institution? More remarkable indeed that either she or Hero find any joy in the idea of getting married at all. I would almost expect a Four Weddings and a Funeral situation - "I love you, but I sure as hell will not marry you." The misery of the two marriages makes a strange contrast with the happiness of the two eventual weddings.


This is not an easy production to watch. Part of the reason I've watched it so many times isn't just that I enjoy it, but I'm still trying to understand what motivated these particular characters to do what they did, what motivated the different emotional swings. Catherine Tate in particular swung a great deal from silly to serious, but I trust her too much as an actress to call it bad acting. In real life, other people's mood swings are incomprehensible, and I do believe there was a reason for the abrupt switches beyond "That's what the director told me to do." But it takes careful viewing.

And really, it is a fantastic performance. I'm happy not only to have seen it, but to own it and get the chance to watch it many, many more times.