Much Ado
So this was a bad way to spend two hours straight after ashtanga, due to cinema air con and sweatiness combining unpleasantly (luckily nobody too nearby to suffer). I am now very stiff and in need of a bath. Which may be why I have not overcome my jaundiced view of the play. But the production? Well worth it.
Is it distracting that it's in such a modern setting? Only for a few moments here and there; it took me a while to settle in, but thereafter, it was background and enjoyable. The casting is more distracting, not because Joss puts the wrong people into roles but because I haven't seen the actors all that recently, so there's a lot of 'Huh, Nathan Fillion really filled out' and 'Jeez, Tom Lenk comedy stache'. And it took me a while to even recognise Fran Krantz, though that's partly because Topher is a world away from Claudio. But they are all good, I think. I liked the older cast members, giving some oomph to rather flat parts - Reed Diamond as Don Pedro was great, as was Clark Gregg as Leonato. Especial props to Amy Acker, who we know is excellent and really gives Beatrice some spine as well as wit. 'Kill Claudio' is shivery. And most of all to Fillion, Lenk and Joss for making Dogberry and co funny. Admittedly, cutting them radically is required, but it works.
My issues are *all* with the play, not the production. I detest the Hero-shaming scene, one of my least favourite in all of Shakespeare (outside the Taming of the Shrew). And I know, times and morals change, you can't only view Elizabethan drama through modern filters, but it still bites, disgustingly. That said, I do like Joss's very overt framing of Beatrice/Benedick as a past sexual relationship (with just enough textual support to make it work); it successfully undercuts the Non-Virgin Should Suffer message, as we know they weren't contemplating marriage at that point. Beatrice's fury at Hero's treatment is also given full measure and tells us that the reaction of the menfolk is a disgrace.
Most of all though (did I say this last year after seeing the French version at the Globe? May have.), I do not get Don John. Sean Maher does a nice sinister characterisation, helped by the gender change of Conrade to give a new edge to some scenes. But what is his problem? What is his backstory? Does he hate his brother, and if so, does he hate him enough that there's real satisfaction in fucking up the life of the girl his brother's successful young lieutenant would otherwise have married? It's too distant, too loose. He's a bastard and a Spaniard, but I need more out of characterisation than that - it's the Elizabethan equivalent of giving someone an English accent, cold lighting and a sign that says mwahahaha I am ev0l. I just can't care about his motives - and then he runs away so you never get a resolution or even a confrontation. He's a vacuum at the heart of the main plot and I'm afraid for that I blame the author. It's a shoddy piece of construction.
N.B. Obvs, I am a mistress of plot in all its forms and well able to criticise Shakespeare. Yes.
Is it distracting that it's in such a modern setting? Only for a few moments here and there; it took me a while to settle in, but thereafter, it was background and enjoyable. The casting is more distracting, not because Joss puts the wrong people into roles but because I haven't seen the actors all that recently, so there's a lot of 'Huh, Nathan Fillion really filled out' and 'Jeez, Tom Lenk comedy stache'. And it took me a while to even recognise Fran Krantz, though that's partly because Topher is a world away from Claudio. But they are all good, I think. I liked the older cast members, giving some oomph to rather flat parts - Reed Diamond as Don Pedro was great, as was Clark Gregg as Leonato. Especial props to Amy Acker, who we know is excellent and really gives Beatrice some spine as well as wit. 'Kill Claudio' is shivery. And most of all to Fillion, Lenk and Joss for making Dogberry and co funny. Admittedly, cutting them radically is required, but it works.
My issues are *all* with the play, not the production. I detest the Hero-shaming scene, one of my least favourite in all of Shakespeare (outside the Taming of the Shrew). And I know, times and morals change, you can't only view Elizabethan drama through modern filters, but it still bites, disgustingly. That said, I do like Joss's very overt framing of Beatrice/Benedick as a past sexual relationship (with just enough textual support to make it work); it successfully undercuts the Non-Virgin Should Suffer message, as we know they weren't contemplating marriage at that point. Beatrice's fury at Hero's treatment is also given full measure and tells us that the reaction of the menfolk is a disgrace.
Most of all though (did I say this last year after seeing the French version at the Globe? May have.), I do not get Don John. Sean Maher does a nice sinister characterisation, helped by the gender change of Conrade to give a new edge to some scenes. But what is his problem? What is his backstory? Does he hate his brother, and if so, does he hate him enough that there's real satisfaction in fucking up the life of the girl his brother's successful young lieutenant would otherwise have married? It's too distant, too loose. He's a bastard and a Spaniard, but I need more out of characterisation than that - it's the Elizabethan equivalent of giving someone an English accent, cold lighting and a sign that says mwahahaha I am ev0l. I just can't care about his motives - and then he runs away so you never get a resolution or even a confrontation. He's a vacuum at the heart of the main plot and I'm afraid for that I blame the author. It's a shoddy piece of construction.
N.B. Obvs, I am a mistress of plot in all its forms and well able to criticise Shakespeare. Yes.