William Shakespeare was prescient. We all know that. Nevertheless, none of us has heretofore realized that the visionary playwright was so prescient he could foresee the development of 20th-century/21st-century attitudes.
Director Kenny Leon has sussed out Shakespeare’s astounding insight and brings it to the fore in his first-rate, all-African-American Much Ado About Nothing, which seemingly is placed in today’s Georgia. That’s if you go by two banners ballyhooing “Stacey Abrams 2020” on designer Beowulf Boritt’s set-dominating brick mansion on the outdoor stage of the Delacorte.
For over 400 years now Much Ado-ers Beatrice and Benedick have been mocking each other, ribbing each other, sparring verbally with each other; but it’s taken Leon to understand that all that while they have been “playing the dozens.” (This is defined in the Urban Dictionary as a practice in which people attempt to outwit each other, resulting in increasingly sharp insults.) Indeed, linguists may eventually conclude that Shakespeare’s combative pair invented the riotous pastime. As a matter of substantiating fact, in act two, scene two, Beatrice is told, “Lady, you put him down.” In other words, possibly the world’s actual first “putdown” is attributed to her.
[Read Melissa Rose Bernardo’s ★★★ review here.]
In Leon’s rousing treatment, when Beatrice (the adorably full-figured, not to say Rubens-esque, Danielle Brooks) addresses Benedick (the suave Grantham Coleman) as “Be-ne-dick” with an emphasis on the third syllable, Leon has seen to it that only one of the production’s examples of attitude is boisterously flaunted. Others regularly deal in it as well. To wit, the frequently dulcet Hero (lithe, lilting Margaret Odette) and her chatty BFFs often affect flamboyant attitude. Which is not to mention Dogberry (Lateefah Holder, comical and also Rubens-esque), whose proud malapropisms lift some of the somber tones from the play’s later scenes.
As usual in a remarkable script handling love and near-tragedy, the only ones wallowing in bad attitude are the self-proclaimed villain Don John (Hubert Point-Du Jour in another of his sleek outings) and trouble-making accomplices as they convince Claudio (Jeremie Harris, gallant and amusingly excitable) that fiancée Hero is sleeping around and so not worth his wedding band.
Director Leon has such a grasp on the tragicomedy (the comitragedy?) that by the time Peter Kaczorowski’s turns his lights out for the last time, it feels as if the Bard wrote the piece knowing that in 2019 someone would at last come along and get what he was truly prognosticating.
Much Ado About Nothing is arguably Shakespeare’s best comedy, because it’s more intriguingly complex than the others—as well as carrying that slyly ironic title (the play makes much ado about plenty)—and Leon treats it accordingly. And the plot’s twists long guaranteed to shock audiences do their shocking here as well as, or even better than, ever—e.g., Hero’s father Leonato (Chuck Cooper, outstanding as always in graying phony tail) turning on her when he hears Claudio’s accusations.
It needs to be said that all the Much Ado About Nothing departments are operating like gangbusters. Maybe start with Camille A. Brown’s choreography, and there’s loads of it, often executed by the entire company. More than once line dances are the hot thing, so hot that there have to be audience members who are only barely restraining themselves from jumping up to join the line.
Emilio Sosa’s costumes and Mia Neal’s hair, wig and make-up designs leave no doubt that it’s a stylish crowd occupying that beautiful brick edifice with its many windows and doors and convenient wraparound terrace. (Somehow I may have missed Hero’s maid Margaret pretending to be a loose Hero behind one of those second-story windows and thereby implicating her mistress.) At the interrupted wedding, the suits and gowns are eye-popping. Sosa’s giving Hero a train is inspired. Vera Wang is going to wish she’d thought of the ensemble.
Music abounds throughout, a terrific pleasure because so many of the players sing lustily, Brooks hardly the least of them. Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” shows up enough to be established as a motif for the abuse-of-women skullduggery. Much of the other tunes breezing about the Central Park air are Jason Michael Webb’s. He’s to be commended for the often effective rhythm-and-blues impressions. (N. B.: choreographer Brown and composer Webb supplied the same theatrical oomph to the just-ending-season’s Choir Boy.)
Not too far into the action an automobile arrives upstage out of which emerge the recently successful military men. There’s no program credit for it, but there it is, eliciting delighted laughter and applause. It’s only one of Leon’s abundant surprises in a Shakespeare revival about which much ado should absolutely be made.
Much Ado About Nothing opened June 11, 2019, at the Delacorte Theater and runs through June 23. Tickets and information: publictheater.org
