Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Some people (you know who you are…Ari) feel that Kenneth Branagh’s cinematic version of Much Ado About Nothing is the gold standard. I admit, though Ken’s version is one of my favorites, I cannot find it within me to apply that label to anything with Keanu Reeves in it. Sorry. Ain’t gonna happen.

Then there is Joss Whedon’s Much Ado, filmed on a shoestring at his home in Malibu, but for all that it’s made by Joss (squee!), it still takes about 20 minutes of film-time to get its feet under itself, and that’s too long.

There’s also the Brandon Arnold version, a high-school production that might best be re-titled “Much Ado 90210.” Just…don’t.

Beyond that, you have to go back to the ’80s or the ’70s to find a decent version so, still and all, Branagh’s version is one of the best…

…but…

…it’s a movie.

You all know that I’m a fan of Shakespeare. My DVD armoire holds several versions of several plays, renditions old and new, but what it has precious little of is actual stage productions of the plays. Don’t get me wrong: I adore some of the cinematic productions of Bill’s plays, and some of them are absolute classics. It’s just that, with all the directorial “vision” and tracking shots and up close mumblings caught by super-sensitive mics in natural candlelight, something is missing.

These were, in the beginning, plays. They were intended to be performed on the stage, before an audience, not shown in an unlit theater to hushed crowds. They were, in fact, some of the earliest plays that were meant to be enjoyed by the common people. They were–and are–products of a line that goes back to our fireside storytellers, our Homers, our odists; they were born of our innate drive to remember and recount our lives and our histories.

What was it like, 400 years ago, to see a performance of one of Shakespeare’s plays? How different would it have been from our darkened cinemas and our shadowed proscenium halls?

For an answer, I give you the 2012 production of Much Ado About Nothing, performed at London’s Globe Theatre, during a rainstorm, in front of a live (and somewhat sodden) crowd.

The Globe Theatre, built in 1997 a few yards from the site of the original Globe, is a reconstruction of Shakespeare’s “wooden ‘o'” on the southern bank of the Thames. The theatre’s mission is to bring Shakespeare as originally produced to modern audiences and, I have to say, judging from this one production, it’s a great experience.

This production won’t please everyone, especially if you are an ardent fan of the cinematic versions, but I would encourage interested parties to view it simply to see how it differs. The acting, of course, is excellent and the costumes beautiful, but the lighting is only that provided by grey London skies (okay, and some electric floodlamps) and the cinematography is…shall we say…minimal?

But it isn’t a movie. It’s a play.

What else is different? In the Globe, the audience isn’t seated comfortably at a safe viewing distance; the Globe’s stage thrusts out into the audience, the closest members of which (the “groundlings”) are so close that the actors can (and sometimes do) reach out and touch them. This proximity, this intimacy, allows for immediate interaction. Eye contact is made. Jokes are shared. Secrets given in soliloquy feel as if they really are secrets, confided to us directly. We become part of the performance by our presence.

There are other differences as well, that separate the Globe’s production from others, most notably (to me) the way humor is presented.

Much Ado is a brilliant comedy of words. Noblemen and gentlewomen banter and jest. Beatrice and Benedick fence in hilarious badinage. Allusions and wordplay were aimed at the cultured guests in the upper seats, and were expected in many cases to go literally over the heads of the penny-a-pop common-folk near the stage.

This is a mainstay of Much Ado, but the play is also populated by lower characters, the Dogberrys and Borachios of the cast. The humor of these roles, for me, has always been in the malapropisms and puns of the script, but in Shakespeare’s day, Will Kemp and the other “clowns” played directly to the groundlings, giving them something more suited to their less educated sensibilities. The new Globe keeps this alive, and the humor of these characters is low, lewd, and at times shockingly crass. I have read reviews of the Globe’s productions that complain of this, but I cannot find fault; it is true to the source and true to the heritage, which is precisely what the new London Globe intends to preserve.

I enjoyed this production immensely, so much in fact that I went looking for the other productions from The Globe. They have many, and some are part of the Globe’s “Original Practices” efforts, spoken in Shakespearean dialect and sometimes (such as with their Twelfth Night) done as they were in Shakespeare’s day, with an all-male cast.

This is a relatively new resource for fans of Shakespeare’s plays and history, of which I intend to take full advantage.

k