Review: Much Ado About Nothing by Present Company Theatre
by Michael Meigs
How ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm, once they've seen Par-ee?
-- Young, Lewis and Donaldson, 1919
Present Company has been celebrating Shakespeare out in east Austin since 2011, performing to audiences sprawled comfortably picnic-style on the premises of Rain Lily Farm. This year they've brought their style right downtown. Whole Foods Market has made available its broad, comfortable rooftop garden for the current run of Much Ado About Nothing. Admission is free and the entertainment is superb, appropriate for all. The well-attended opening night even had some fascinated toddlers clinging to edge of the wide walkways, intently following the action.
The post-Great-War ditty continues, How ya gonna keep 'em away from Broadway,/Jazzing around, and painting the town?
Of course, the answer is that you can't. You're not going to keep Present Company artists from taking their exuberant and participatory vision to a wider audience and expanding into additional activities.
The Present Company story began with Much Ado down at the farm in 2011, and the variously changing company has subsequently added The Winter's Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night's Dream to the roster. They've also been working with youth. In 2012 they offered classes paralleling their production of Taming of the Shrew, and right now they're inviting 5th-8th graders to submit one-act plays with 'quest' themes for prizes and a staged reading in September (deadline is June 15; click for details).
For this step upward to the roof and greater exposure, Present Company is redeploying some of its strengths from the 2011 inaugural presentation. Lindsay Doleshal again directs. Stephanie Carll repeats as the wittily elusive Beatrice, and Sergio Alvarado is again Don Pedro, illustrious commanding officer of the returning warriors (in this present-day setting, naval officers and sailors welcomed to the Hotel Messina in New York City during Fleet Week). Participants in the 2014 cast include names familiar to Austin theatre goers as well as new, attractive faces.
Much Ado is a frothy concoction, animated especially by the verbal fencing between Beatrice (Carll) and the unattached anti-matrimonialist Benedick (Sam Grimes). There's a darker side to it involving a malevolent scheme by Pedro's illegitimate brother Don John (a sullenly powerful David Boss). With assistance from his henchman Boracchio (Ky Cleveland) the bastard stages a spectacle intended to derail the wedding of valiant young Claudio (Dan Dalbout) and their host's winsome daughter Hero (Cassie Petersen). The themes are those of trust and deceit in friendship, family and courtship. No need to give you any more "Who hit John?/Who did Don John hit?" for this familiar piece; if wary or confused, you can always view Kenneth Branaugh's 1993 film version, as the young family sitting next to us had done in preparation for the evening.
The garden rooftop setting at Whole Foods Market offers an elegant urban equivalent of their Rain Lily Farm home base. The playing area is immense and well finished, a sweep of decking, grassy plots, graceful trees, ramps, walkways and a five- or six-story upward reach of building as a backdrop. They use virtually all of it and sometimes scamper through the seating area as well. An immediately obvious disadvantage is the racket of downtown -- shouts from the street below, car noises, motorcycle rumbles and even the periodic creak and groan of Union Pacific railway cars transiting Austin. The cast had obviously trained for that challenge. They deliver lines with ringing conviction and impressive projection, working vocal cords so forcefully that one wonders afterward what remedies are going to keep them in shape for the remaining ten performances, Fridays - Sundays from 7 p.m. (Perhaps there will be less noise on Sunday evenings?)
Seating's open from 6:30 p.m. and includes ample space for blankets or portable low-rise stadium chairs as well as broad wooden benches already in place. The space comfortably accommodated about 175 on opening night. Present Company offers a humorous fifteen-minute pre-show at 7 p.m. orchestrated by Jennifer Coy, talking about Shakespeare's language, prepping the audience for the show, staging a mock battle of the Shakespeare insults and translating a famous monologue into contemporary English.
Coy's a confident, brass-voiced comedienne. She's a triumph of ineptitude and verbal confusion as Constable Dogberry, the clown of the piece. To make sure that her malapropisms are appreciated in that noisy space, director Doleshal has Dogberry's assistant Verges attempt to correct them, to the comic annoyance of Dogberry. Mateo Barrera has that duty as Verges and does his own comic turn as a nightclub singer.
Stephanie Carll and Sam Grimes as Beatrice and Benedick are the heart of the production. Carll's full of spirit and intelligence, qualities that unfortunately have disadvantaged many a woman's matrimonial prospects since time immemorial, while Grimes is a bit of a dry stick. His Benedick is just as bright as Beatrice but he's lost in abstractions and regularly talking to himself, the very essence of the perennial bachelor who winds up either in his garden tending flowers or in the library leafing through well-thumbed leatherbound books. True, Benedick accompanied the fleet, but on the evidence given, it sounds as if they were on exercises rather than in conflict; one imagines this Benedick happily fiddling with naval charts and writing combat scenarios.
Commander Don Pedro and cheery aspiring officer Claudio (Dan Dalbout) enjoy teasing him, and they quickly embrace the proposal of their host the jocund Leonato (Lowell Bartholomee) to entice B&B into romance. The cast and director use the railings, ramps and levels to good advantage as they maneuver each B to overhear commiserating and mostly false comments about the languishing love of the other B. Grimes has a bit of a twang that emerges when Benedick's under stress, and it makes him all that much more human.
Much Ado is well decked out with vivid characters. Cassadie Petersen, one of my favorites, makes a lovely love-enchanted Hero. Her despairing reaction to Claudio's denunciation of her at the altar is powerfully moving. Ky Cleveland, an actor whom I've not seen before, plays both ends of the spectrum. He's Boracchio, the catspaw of evil Don John, a bristle-bearded, swilling sailor who looks like an image of a 19th century British tar taken from a tobacco can; and at the wedding he plays the officiant, a thoughtfully serene rabbi (hey, it's New York!). Craig Kanne radiates calm simplicity both as co-host Antonio and as the earnest but comically slow watchman.
Present Company's production is amusing, light-hearted and quick-moving. Whole Foods has ample parking and a store full of picnic fare for you. The fun kicks off at 7 p.m. and winds up at about 9:40, with an intermission midway and refreshments available for sale on the terrace. You can drop a contribution into the jar at table at the top of the stairs, and I suggest you do so. Let's see if we can get these folks back here in this green world again sometime in the future.
EXTRA
Click to view Present Company's program for Much Ado About Nothing
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Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
Present Company Theatre
The event runs April 18th - May11, 2014, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings. Seating is from 6:30 p.m., performance from 7 p.m.
Promoting the philosophy of “accessible & sustainable art,” SHAKESPEARE AT THE MARKET is a FREE event. Guests are encouraged to arrive early, bring a blanket or short chair, and stop by the prepared foods department at Whole Foods Market to pick up a picnic. A suggested donation of $10-20 is encouraged for guests who are able to support.
RSVPs encouraged! Go here:
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/shakespeare-at-the-market-much-ado-about-nothing-registration-10913062263
