The Most Ado: A Party Play
Adapted and Directed by Mikey Laird
Music by Brian Blankenship and Beth Malouf
at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont (map)
thru Aug 24 | tickets: $15-$18 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
Read review
Booze it up with Benedick, Beatrice and the Bard!
Northing Special Productions presents
The Most Ado: A Party Play
Review by Clint May
Before the Bard was Bowdlerized by those hypocritical Victorians looking to make him the dusty stuff of snobs and scholars, a trip to see Shakespeare showed he really knew how to be ribald. There’s a soft spot in my heart for any troupe looking to drop a few modern monocles by ardently reminding us that this was not a prudish man but a real person who wrote for *all* the people. For every existential soliloquy or love sonnet, there’s a little naughtiness just around the corner. Mercutio tells Romeo to find a lady who likes it in the backdoor, Antipholus and Dromio tell a 23-line fat joke, Venus bluntly tells Adonis to administer cunnalingus, and I won’t even dignify this review with the little joke that occurs in Twelfth Night. Some have demonstrated this by hand-picking the scenes into a compendium, while director Mikey Laird has chosen to reinterpret the genesis of all rom-coms with the insertion of more than a few F-bombs.
Largely intact, the dialogue of The Most Ado updates Much Ado more in tonality and immersion than wording. At first, I was wondering if this would be the kind of immersion experience similar to Awesome 80’s Prom, wherein the actors intermingle with the audience as we drink and revel ourselves. Instead, we are led into a an antechamber, told to silence our phones, given some guidelines on how to interact should we be called upon, etc. The curtains drop, and we are allowed into the larger space of Theater Wit’s Stage 3. Various frat-house style seating augments the space’s standard seating arrangement—futons, lawn chairs and couches. We surround the proceedings and the actor’s frequently get within touching distance, but it’s not as immersive as you might expect from the title. Various audience members are called up to dance the cha-cha, but other than that, the involvement remains limited.
Leonato’s (Brian Rohde) villa is now a party pad as the name would suggest. He’s played as a missing third member of Cheech and Chong, presiding over all with a genial air in the first act before his daughter’s alleged ignominy. As the revelries progress, we meet the massive cast in turn. Despite the fact that Claudio (Raymond Jacquet) and Hero’s (Libby Conkle) relationship is given near equal weight to Beatrice (Kasey O’Brien) and Benedick’s (Mike Schiff), it’s the latter that has historically stolen the show and this is no different. Their infamously witty banter masking attraction has become de rigueur in romance for four centuries. It’s schoolyard gender politics writ large. Laird has dialed the subtexts up to 11, replacing Shakespeare’s 16th century crassness with our modern day slanders. Saying that “none but ‘skanks and scumbags’ (instead of ‘libertines’) delight in him.” is but one of the more gentle examples. Act one is pure party while act two is the hangover.
Played with a vulnerable-cum-irascible wit, Schiff is actually quite a charmer with a very modern sense of comic timing in his hapless cool-dude swagger. His chemistry with the wonderfully prickly O’Brien is palpable as their merry war of wits plays out. Most Ado makes them three times more interesting than the tribulations of Conkle and Jacquet, whose more traditional desires never ignite sparks and perhaps never can. Stephen D. Wisegarver (as Don John) and his ever present emo-raven are played for laughs—giving the raven a mask at the ball is a great touch—as he schemes to undo his brother’s best laid plans. The twenty-plus cast is not entirely fine-tuned to the work however. Many ancillary characters need to work on their projection and really up their commitment to sell that sense of fun that needs to permeate a party play. Their command of the nuance of the dialogue, however, is not in question. A live band augments the action in ultra-hip fashion (I believe this debuted in Wicker Park), and one wishes they had parties half this interesting. Ursala becomes Ursolo (Scott Patrick Sawa), a flamboyant queen-in-waiting with a relatable crush on the unattainable Benedick and the GBF of the other ladies in waiting. Dogberry (Adam Overberg) is a satire of a Jeff Bridges-type lawman as the bumbling watchman.
Yeah, it’s a little gimmicky at times, but it can be forgiven because the fun becomes contagious. The best comedic bits are actually the improv-esque meta-asides. Far be it for me to encourage a lack of temperance, but had I not been on the job I would have loved a little buzz to enhance the immersion and feel like I was part of the party. Getting passed the hagiography of Shakespeare sometimes means going a little far to the edges of social propriety to undo the effects of a century-plus sugarcoating of his bracing directness. He could be a rude crude dude, and in this age of political correctness, Most Ado is a welcome rejoinder.
Rating: ★★★
The Most Ado: A Party Play continues through August 24th at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 3pm. Tickets are $18 ($15 in advance), and are available by phone (773-975-8150) or online through TheaterWit.org (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at NothingSpecialProductions.com. (Running time: 2 hours, includes an intermission)
artists
cast
Moira Begale (Constance), Conor Burke (Don Pedro), Celeste Burns (Borachia), Nathan Burns (Antonio), Libby Conkle (Hero), Kaitlin Fleharty (Margaret), Steve Gonabe (Balthasar), Raymond Jacquet (Claudio), Melanie Kibbler (Georgia Seacoal, the Second Watch), Kasey O’Brien (Beatrice), Adam Overberg (Dogberry), Brian Rohde (Leonato), Mike Schiff (Benedick), Ben Schlotfelt (Francis the Sexton), Sarah Shirkey (Verges), Daniel Vuillaume (Hugh Oatcake, the First Watch), Stephen D. Wisegarver (Don John, the Bastard), Scott Patrick Sawa (Ursulo)
behind the scenes
Mikey Laird (director, adaptor), Garth Moritz (stage manager), Kit Ryan (production manager), Eric Vigo (lighting design), Frankie Paul (props design), Shawn Quinlan (costumer design), Steve Wisegarver (technical director), Brian Blankenship, Beth Malouf (original music, music arrangements, musicians), Tank & The Beez (band)
14-0831
