fajrdrako | Much Ado About Theatrics.... (Reply)

I just saw the most inventive, funny, clever play.

It was Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, but not as I've ever seen it played.

It was theatre in the park, and not the first time I've seen Shakespeare in a park. I remember a rather terrible production of A Midsummer Night's Dream once in Regent's Park, London, and there have been other, less memorable park performances.

This is the first time the park with the performance has been a couple of blocks from my house.

I enveigled Beulah to go with me by promising to carry her chair. (And I did.) The performance was done by A Company of Fools, which has been performing in parks all over Ottawa this month. I'd heard it was good.

I had no doubt: Much Ado About Nothing is my favourite Shakespeare comedy, and it would be my favourite of all if it weren't for Hamlet. I've seen it in Stratford, Ontario; Stratford-Upon-Avon in England (where it was performed as in Colonial India); in London; in movies; at the National Arts Centre - anywhere I could. None of the performances were anything like this.

They call this the Torchlight Shakespeare series. The play had fifteen characters, played by three actors and a set of garden tools, with plastic flowers as props. Costumes converted Beatrice into the evil Don John in seconds; then into a ragtag Dogberry. A wall became a podium and a pulpit. Hero was played by a winsome mop with a Georgian accent and her father was a garden rake with rope hair and mustache. The priest was played by a garden gnome who talked like Porky Pig.

And they were all brilliant. I was particularly impressed by Margo MacDonald, who not only totally did justice to Beatrice, but was the funniest and best Dogberry I have ever seen - and I usually find Dogberry problematic. She was pretty sinister as Don John, too.

Scott Florence as Benedick was Beatrice's equal, and that's saying a lot.

There were between 100 and 150 people watching the show, at a guess - in lawn chairs or on blankets. Many of them were children and they particularly loved it, laughing loudly at all the really funny bits. So much for Shakespeare being difficult to get.

As the metaphorical curtain went up, it started to rain. They carried on bravely, and the rain stopped. Twenty minutes into the show it started to pour. They took a brief break to see if it would stop; it did, and, with the encouragement of the audience, they continued. Amazing that, despite being soaked, only a handful of people left.

From their programme:

That tent would have been useful tonight.