Review: Much Ado About Nothing by The Baron's Men
by Michael Meigs

No signs of woe were evident October 2 at the final production of the Baron's Men in the Elizabethan-style Curtain Theatre, their riverside home. The house was full and so were the benches for groundlings; artistic director Lindsay Palilnsky mixed with visiting high school students, jauntily chaired them in a Benedict vs. Beatrice competition onstage, and welcomed everyone to the company's now familiar semblance of classic dramatic art of the turn of the sixteenth century in London.

 

 

Much Ado about Nothing was a fine way to exit, heads held high and promising more Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre in Austin's future.  Set in Italy, it's a vigorous tale of celebration marred only briefly by unredeemed villain Don John (Michael Pratt), countered successfully but in bumbling fashion by a clownish constable who gets everything backwards and is proud to be labeled an A.S.S. A troupe of victorious officers have returned from the wars, infatuation strikes, a masquerade ball takes place, misperceptions abound but all comes right in the end. Unlike star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet, protagonists Benedict and Beatrice are cross and not lovers at all (until enticed into mutual admiration). Aspiring bride Hero (Anneliese Friend) is maligned and renounced at the altar, reported dead, has her name cleared, and is revealed in triumph.  Friend's successive reactions of delight, dismay, grief and proud justification catch at the heart, marking the timeline of betrothal, broken promise, and renewed hope. They draw a jagged but eventually blissful counterpart to the B&B catfight.

 

Lots going on in this text, huh? Central to the fun is a rivalry of wit and gibes between Jacquelyn Lies as Beatrice and Timothy McKinney as Benedict. Both vow they never ever will marry and readly explain why, skewering one another the while. Lies sails across the stage, wit flashing like cannon fire; McKinney gives us a slim, wiry ponderer whose self-assurance is thoroughly shaken when estate owner Don Pedro (Chris Casey) undertakes to awaken him to the attraction that opposites inevitably exert upon one another.

 

The audience (particularly the groundlings) greatly enjoyed the slapstick peek-a-boo performed in turn by Lies and McKinney as B&B were being beguiled into love. The antics brought home the comedy to the audience quite literally as they sneaked around the raised stage and peered, spellbound, at their deceivers.

 

 

Johnathan Vineyard as Boraccio, Don John's tall, swaggering, loud-voiced catspaw, was a particular standout. Boraccio's forthright admission of fault was a welcome promise of redemption, particularly when contrasted to Dogberry's ineffectual flailing and crowing about justice.

 

Some reservations:

• Early in the action, host Don Pedro woos Hero on behalf of his protegé Claudio (Rylee Ross). During the ball, Casey artfully entices Hero (so artfully that jealous Claudio thinks Don Pedro's speaking for himself). Problem: music played on the apron and downstage steps during the scene drowned out much of this banter for me. 

 

• Audrey Renkenberger embodies a charmingly simple-minded constable Dogberry. The character's cheery but entirely misplaced self-confidence is comic, as is the clever business of her obliging neighbor Verges (Jared Wells) to haul her about on his back. Her delivery of the lines is so smooth, however, that almost all of Dogberry's malapropisms (and there are many!) may pass unnoticed.

 

• What happened before the finale with the reveal of the resurrected Hero? Cuts in the text or dropped lines gave uninformed audience members no notion of the plan of Friar Antonio (Julio Mella)  to fake her death (a trope similar to Friar Lawrence's failed subterfuge in Romeo and Juliet, staged just a couple of years earlier).

 

 Much Ado ends with a song and dance, as did virtually all of Shakespeare's works when originally performed. That's particularly apt way to mark and celebrate the end of a run of twenty-plus years.

 

Nothing daunted (a phrase that doesn't appear in Shakespeare), the Baron's Men plan to continue their art and comradeship. They've appealed for support for a relocation fund, realizing that in the interim they'll find themselves performing indoors, quite a different flavor of drama. They're not going away, folks; they're just going inside—somewhere!— for the time being.

 

EXTRA

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Much Ado About Nothing
by William Shakespeare
The Baron's Men