Review: A swift and subtle ‘Much Ado'

Much Ado About Nothing, William Shakespeare's comedy built on trickery at every turn, is much ado about making good theater at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, where it opened Friday night in a greatly entertaining production.

James J. Christy's version sweeps fluidly through the plot, one of Shakespeare's simplest, which he spun by getting extra mileage out of a successful play he'd already created — The Taming of the Shrew. Acrimonious lovers do well on stage, he'd found, and he set up Much Ado's Beatrice and Benedick as bickering opposites who have known each other for a long time and eventually come to see that they're not so opposite after all — but only after they're tricked into it, each being falsely told of the other's secret passion. Everyone who knows them accepts their constant swapping of insults as normal behavior they've developed over time. But in fact the two characters share something else: a stunningly empty loneliness. Shakespeare only alludes to it, even as Benedick constantly protests the very concept of love and Beatrice constantly dismisses all of Benedick.

That loneliness percolates in the background of Christy's production, giving unexpected heft to its all-for-fun nature.

It comes across in body language as Eleanor Handley and Rob Kahn hurl their nasty barbs, and even in how they look at or away from each other. What you get from this — and from the rest of Christy's production — is a rich Much Ado, with a cast of 22 in nuanced portrayals, a spot-on set by Thom Weaver that's essentially a two-story wall defining the town of Messina, Sam Fleming's swell costumes for a variety of events, and a very good time.

Handley (I'm not sure why she gives Beatrice a heavy British accent, the only one in the production) and Kahn show a sweet vulnerability as the casings of their characters crack, but they're not the only lovers here.

Beatrice's cousin and gal-pal Hero (Emiley Kiser) and Benedick's comrade Claudio (Zack Robidas) swoon for each other but are soon tricked out of love by the play's villain, Don John (Tom Degnan).

It all happens under the watchful eyes — and sometimes with the deceitful help — of the mayor of Messina (a wizened Joe Vincent) and his sister (Jo Twiss, wonderful as an Old World mama you don't want to mess with).

Another underlying theme of the play — loyalty — also comes through nicely in the web of machinations Shakespeare creates, as he so often does, by embellishing stories from other sources.

Hmm, loyalty and loneliness — you can find them lurking in the shadows of a wholly different enterprise, Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, which many of the same cast members will be doing in repertory with Much Ado when that play opens at the festival, at De Sales University near Quakertown, on Friday.

Much Ado

About Nothing

Through Aug. 5 at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival, on the DeSales University campus, 2755 Station Ave., Center Valley, near Quakertown. Tickets: $25-$52. Information: 610-282-9455 or www.pashakespeare.org.