One of the best things about the Central Park production of “Much Ado About Nothing,” starring Blythe Danner and Kevin Kline as Beatrice and Benedick, is the way the perennially warring lovers behave when they finally make friends. She runs to him and he spins her around—an echo of shampoo-commercial romance—but at the point where two normal people (or television lovers) would look at each other and kiss these two just look at each other.
The scene in which Beatrice and Benedick come to terms after Hero and Claudio’s abortive wedding is potentially one of the most romantic encounters in English letters. Beatrice’s cousin has just been publicly humiliated by Benedick’s best friend. The romance—gentlemen, take note—lies chiefly in the aplomb with which Benedick handles the delicate situation. All the same, it’s important that the two refrain from kissing until the very end of the play. Beatrice is one of those comic heroines who risk dying alone because of character more than because of situation, and we have to feel her danger.
This production, which runs through July 31st at the Delacorte Theatre and may move to Broadway, was directed by Gerald Freedman. Mr. Freedman is the artistic director of the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, which produced last season’s disappointing revival of George Abbott and Philip Dunning’s “Broadway.” His “Much Ado,” every bit as lively and entertaining as “Broadway” was sluggish, is an almost non-stop delight. The style of the production is Italian mixed the elements of Regency England: John Ezell has designed a system of Mediterranean roads and facades, but the terra cotta house-fronts are draped in wisteria, the windows are leaded, and Theoni Aldrege’s costumes are reminiscent of Jane Austen. At the beginnings of scenes, young men come out and transport us to another part of Messina by shifting a turntable structure a few degrees one way or the other. At dusk, lights glow in windows and the men sit chatting on walls.
New York has had no shortage of good revivals of “Much Ado” in recent years: in 1984, the Royal Shakespeare Company brought over Terry Hands’ production (with Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack); last year, Gerald Gutierrez directed the Acting Company in a version set in Cuba in the nineteen-thirties, and A.J. Antoon’s 1972 production is still within memory. If Mr. Freedman’s production rivals those, it is partly because he is so fortunate in his leading players. Miss Danner and Mr. Kline play the lovers with a vivid Ealing-comedy sweetness that is utterly enchanting. Their relationship stresses the buffoonery of romance over the romance of buffoonery. Initially, the miking of Miss Danner’s husky voice is a problem—during the first third of the play, I kept wishing she would clear her throat—and her early sparring with Benedick lacks mirth and sexiness. But, then, she has opted for the disappointed-in-love interpretation: more than the “merry” side of Beatrice, which the Prince, Don Pedro, finds so endearing, Miss Danner emphasizes the hard edge of bitterness in a woman with no resources other than her sharp tongue. That she manages to make Beatrice winsome in her hapless inability to speak love is remarkable. Mr. Kline’s performance, meanwhile, is about the stupidity that lies at the root of vanity. His Benedick is the miles gloriosus of Roman comedy, all slow thought and attitudinizing, but love brings insight and a stiff-backed dignity that is pure Alec Guinness.
With two such performances in the roles of Beatrice and Benedick, a strong Don Pedro is needed to make the gulling of the lovers believable. This Mr. Freedman has in Brian Murray, whom New Yorkers may remember for his performance as the long-suffering director in Michael Frayn’s “Noises Off.” Mr. Murray uses his flexible, foghorn voice to make Don Pedro appear to be the only sane man in a village of fools. He’s wise, kind, playful, and irresistibly sarcastic, seeming at times like a perfect match for Beatrice. You really feel for him when she turns down his proposal of marriage.
Playing Don Pedro in this way is fun but my no means necessary. The Shakespearean manipulator is always a morally ambiguous figure, one who makes the world a little more dangerous by tampering with other people’s free will. In “Much Ado,” Don Pedro’s well-meant machinations are balanced by the evil machinations of his bastard brother, Don John; the same forces—lies and hearsay—are at work in both plot and subplot. In a well-rounded production, the “nothing” about which so much fuss is being made should refer, by turns, to romance itself and to the substanceless rumors and accusations flying about the stage. This production soft-pedals all the play’s sinister undertones, turning Don John into a figure of high burlesque, missing the central fact of Claudio’s character—this young man is absurdly ready to believe himself betrayed—and reducing Hero’s deeply mourning uncle, Antonio (George Hall), to stock comic cipher. Here, only a passing nod is given to the violent world outside Messina—a disused cannon. Still, that’s all right for a midsummer, alfresco production.
As the villainous Don John, David Pierce is transcendently funny as he throws fainting fits at the thought of other people’s happiness—here’s another actor who resists the temptation to ham—and he’s well partnered by Dylan Baker’s smiling Borachio. Don Reilly makes an impressive Claudio—particularly in the wedding scene, where he gets at the savagery in Claudio’s extreme moral righteousness. Phoebe Cates is inconsistent in the role of Hero. She doesn’t seem at all natural until the duping-of-Beatrice scene (where Hero has a chance to speak unnaturally), but she comes into her own in the wedding scene, managing, without whining or affectation, to make us believe in the concept of virginity as an abstract principle—which is all you can really ask of an actress playing Hero today. Even the lesser roles are well handled: as the shallow serving girl Margaret, Leslie Geraci is suitably vulgar, and Dan Butler does well by Borachio’s sidekick, Conrade. The only jarring note is Jerry Stiller’s Dogberry, who sounds continually as though he were quoting from a book of Yiddish proverbs. If the production does move to Broadway, Mr. Freedman might think about letting Mr. Stiller off the hook: he looks so unhappy.
Mimi Kramer
The New Yorker, August 1, 1988