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<\/a>This is part II of my review of Ave Maria\u2019s Shakespeare in Performance\u2019s <\/a>Much Ado About Nothing. You can read the first part here. <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n When I wrote my first review of Ave\u2019s Much Ado About Nothing<\/em>, I focused mainly on Don Pedro and Claudio. I was upset by them, but to tell you the truth, there was another character that upset me so much more that my ire at Don Pedro and Claudio paled in comparison.<\/p>\n My most brilliant and wonderful friar cracked the play open a wee bit for me so that I was able to understand my anger at those two as actually being kind of the point. But there really wasn\u2019t any way I was able spin my frustration with the other character. It almost ruined the play for me, actually. I didn\u2019t even leave the play saying, \u201cMan, that was great!\u201d or even \u201cthat was pretty good.\u201d I left saying, \u201cwhy the hell was there a real-life cartoon villain in place of Don John?\u201d<\/p>\n Truly, I cannot accurately convey in words the remarkable ability of this actor to become a cartoon character. I felt like I was watching Who Framed Roger Rabbit?<\/em>, the Elizabethan version. It was so terribly painful at first that I desperately hoped it was a combination of nerves and Red Bull, and the actor would settle down and be normal after a bit. But he didn\u2019t. Every scene with Don John in it was like watching a train wreck. I frantically wanted it to not be happening, especially right in front of me, but there was nothing I could do to stop it, and I could not look away.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve seen Much Ado<\/em> a few times, but the version I\u2019m most familiar with is Kenneth Branagh\u2019s, in spite of my aversion to Kenneth Branagh and my absolute hatred for the way he plays Benedick. I love all the other characters, though, particularly Keanu as Don John. In all the other versions of Much Ado<\/em> I\u2019ve seen, Don John is played similarly to Keanu\u2019s. Tortured, brooding, damaged, seething, and maybe slightly constipated. The Don John of my acquaintance isn\u2019t in<\/em> pain; he is<\/em> pain. His existence is like a supernova of hatred and despair, sucking in everyone around him. He\u2019s dreadful, and the shaming scene has always seemed to me his crowning glory, the moment when he turned love itself into hatred, rage, and despair, playing the rest of the characters like puppets on a string.<\/p>\n The problem with this Don John, though, was that I couldn\u2019t take him seriously. He wasn\u2019t a tortured mastermind of villiany; he was just sort of ridiculously determined to be absolutely other<\/em>. Not laughing when they laughed, not bowing to their conventions, seeking pain where they sought joy. But he wasn\u2019t good at it. None of the schemes he set in motion were his idea at all. They were all Borachio\u2019s ideas. And they weren\u2019t even good ones, at that.<\/p>\n The scene where Borachio and Don John plot the undoing of Hero has always held a kind of horrific fascination for me. I\u2019ve felt that it\u2019s like a skin-crawling window into the heart of malice, letting us see the inner workings of people who plot to destroy with no other purpose than destruction itself. Those types of people frighten me more than any other. And yet, when I saw the play for the second time, I was floored by that scene. I actually heard the words for the first time.<\/p>\n Did you catch that? \u201cHear me call Margaret Hero,hear Margaret term me Claudio.\u201d\u00a0 Excuse the vernacular, but WTF? What exactly would that have proved to Claudio? That his fiance is delusional? That she likes to play weird role-playing games where she pretends her lover is her future husband? That he\u2019s been cloned by an evil genius and his clone is currently ravishing his fiance on her balcony?<\/p>\n I mean, come on. If Claudio had even listened, or taken half a second to think about what he was seeing (and we don\u2019t even know exactly what it is he saw, which important to note), he would have realized that something was fishy. But he didn\u2019t. And he didn\u2019t want to. You can see it in the scene where Don John comes and tells Don Pedro and Claudio of Hero\u2019s alleged infidelity.<\/p>\n Claudio: \u201cIf I see any thing to-night why I should not marry her to-morrow, in the\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 congregation, where I should wed, there will I shame her.\u201d<\/p>\n Don Pedro: \u201cAnd, as I wooed for thee to obtain her, I will join with thee to disgrace her.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They have no proof. They have an unfounded and highly suspicious accusation from a bastard brother whom neither Don Pedro nor Claudio trust. Yet they are already planning the best punishment for Hero. They want to believe Don John. Don John doesn\u2019t manipulate them like puppets; they\u2019re like dominoes, poised on the edge of a chasm, and all Don John does is blow on them a little. They\u2019re all too willing to call jealousy assurance.<\/p>\n One of the reasons I was so furious with Claudio and the Prince is that the way Don John was played shifted the responsibility where it belonged. It really was difficult to take Don John seriously. He wasn\u2019t quite a joke, but he wasn\u2019t a threat, either. He was grotesquely villainous, but in such a ludicrous way that he acted like a sledgehammer, splitting the play wide open.<\/p>\n The plots Borachio concocts and Don John instigates are really silly. The first one unravels quickly, mostly because Claudio just sulks instead of trying to avenge his apparently breached confidence. The second one would have unraveled just as quickly if the Prince and Claudio weren\u2019t willing, and even eager, to believe the worst of Hero and to exact a sickeningly gleeful vengeance upon her. I won\u2019t even get into her own father\u2019s willingness to believe the worst of his child and cry out for her to die, because my head might explode, and this is too long already.<\/p>\n So without even realizing that the very character who brought me so much angst during the play was also the one almost entirely responsible for actually showing<\/em> me the play for the first time, I came home from the first performance high on indignant feminist rage. The Ogre patiently listened to me curse and storm at Claudio and Don Pedro, and then said, \u201cYou\u2019re right, you know. What they did was awful even given the social conventions of the time. But what Beatrice did to Benedick was worse.\u201d<\/p>\n At that point, my head actually did explode. It must have, at least, because all I remember is a red haze that burned me from the inside out and made me say such things to my husband about all you men<\/em> that he didn\u2019t talk to me for two days. Which was okay by me, because I wasn\u2019t talking to him either.<\/p>\n Then I saw the play again.<\/p>\n There was a different Beatrice this time, and she shifted the axis of the play so dramatically that I had to go home and apologize to my husband. The first Beatrice was funny, sarcastic, and generally everything Beatrice is said to be in the play\u2026always merry, born to laugh, etc. But this second Beatrice was something else. She was beauty and wit and charm all deeply streaked with pain. She was glittering, brilliant, fierce, and then when that scene came, she was terrible.<\/p>\n When she took a breath and said, \u201cKill Claudio\u201d, the audience took a collective breath. In that appalled, appalling silence I saw grown adults grasping their heads in their hands, covering their faces, and shielding their eyes, as if they were subconsciously trying to block out what was happening.<\/p>\n And she said it with such a dreadful, icy self-possession that it was impossible to play off as heated emotion. Even if the later scene where she refuses to greet Benedick until he tells her that he has challenged Claudio didn\u2019t convince the audience, the raw power of her delivering those two words was enough. She knew exactly what she was doing. She was using selfless love, freely offered, as a weapon against her enemy.<\/p>\n This is why I was so furious with the Ogre: I would have done the same thing. What she did was awful, utterly unable to be justified, and I was right there with her. I\u2019m still<\/em> right there with her. Claudio deserved to die, to suffer, to be drawn and freaking quartered, and as a woman Beatrice could only accomplish that one way: by twisting a man who loved her to her will. By making the requital of his love conditioned upon his murdering his best friend.<\/p>\n Can you imagine how the play would have ended had not the bumbling, absurd Dogberry* stumbled upon the truth and managed to make it known in spite of his best efforts? Hero and her parents would have seen that Claudio and the Prince didn\u2019t care at all about her death. Benedick and Claudio would have dueled. Likely, Claudio would have been killed. Hero would have lived the rest of her days in some convent, ruined forever. Perhaps Benedick and Beatrice would have gotten married, but it would have been a tragedy of a wedding, and their marriage would be forever and irrevocably marred by what Beatrice had forced Benedick to do. Everyone\u2019s lives would have been utterly wrenched by misery. And it wouldn\u2019t be the fatal work of some dark villain; it would only be the result of their own darkness. Their failure to wait, to be patient, to seek truth, to bear suffering, to be merciful. Really, that\u2019s what the play hinges upon. The destruction we are capable of if we come at life with a battle-axe instead of open arms.<\/p>\n The ending, which has always been vaguely unsatisfying for me, was almost gruesome this time. I felt that their happiness was won too cheaply, and was hollow compared to the malice that went before.\u00a0 Perhaps Claudio and Hero went on to be happy, and maybe even Beatrice, but I don\u2019t think Benedick ever could, at least not in the same way he was happy before. He\u2019s the only character who changes in the play, the only one who grows, and I think that growth is a result of him coming face-to-face with the evil men and women are capable of. I think that\u2019s why he\u2019s so insistent on dancing at the end instead of being married. I think he\u2019s trying to find some way to lighten the darkness that has been unveiled over the course of the play.<\/p>\n I used to think that Much Ado<\/em> was so difficult a play only because of that painful shaming scene. Now I think it\u2019s difficult because it isn\u2019t, after all, a rollicking comedy. It is very, very funny, just like life. It\u2019s also very dark, and very painful, and very unsatisfying. There\u2019s a kind of hole at the center of it. Can there be love after all, when this is what people will do to the ones they love? Is it all artifice? In the end, are we nothing but self-serving wretches?<\/p>\n\n
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