Much ado about nothing, the taming of the shrew
Canadian Stage: Shakespeare in High park, ShakespeareWorks’Home Depot Theatre
the national post

The first two plays in Toronto's annual parade of open-air Shakespeares are comedies, as these alfresco entertainments generally are. Both are set in Italy, as Shakespearean comedies tend to be. Both have been visually updated in their new productions to the early 20th century, which again is par for the course. Both are sex-war pieces, and that's no great surprise, either.

Much Ado About Nothing, which is early middle Shakespeare, might be described as a refinement of The Taming of the Shrew, which is just early. In Much Ado the central couple, Benedick and Beatrice, tame one another, with a little help from their friends. (It might be argued that that's also what the couple in the Shrew do, but more of that later.) The smoother play of the two, it also gets, from James Macdonald for the Dream in High Park, the suaver production. The time frame is the 1930s; the ambience involves straw hats and checkered tablecloths. A musician, Jonathan Monro, sits at the piano and plays ragtime tunes, which in the '30s must have counted as nostalgia, of his own composition. They are excellent, and his setting and performance of ‘Sigh no more, ladies’ makes you wish that the play had more songs. He also acts, doubling as the minor villain Borachio and doing it rather well.

The production starts with a simulated battle, sounding a solemn note that never gets repeated. And no wonder; it's true that the play starts with soldiers returning from the wars, but that's a mere pretence for getting everybody in the same place. As the show proceeds, it goes in for a lot of all-purpose merriment, but it gets stronger and more specific as it goes on. It's kept on course by Juan Chioran's Benedick, which lacks somewhat in physical swagger (the actor, who is pencil-thin, seems more drawing room than barrack room) but nothing in wit or honesty. He keeps, when tricked into love, a delightful balance between Benedick's pride and his passion, and his reconciliation of the two -- "the world must be peopled" -- is a triumph, wisdom reduced to absurdity and all the wiser for it. He, too, can sing; Benedick as written probably can't, but nobody here is going to mind that he does.

Jacklyn Francis's Beatrice takes longer to assert herself, not rising above routine until the church scene, where she simultaneously declares love for Benedick and seeks revenge on Claudio, the man who has broken her cousin Hero's heart. After that, she never looks back. Historical note: A traditional test of Beatrices at the church is whether they can avoid raising a laugh with the peremptory demand to "Kill Claudio." Francis actually goes for the laugh and, getting it, persuades you that Shakespeare may have intended it all along.

The errant Claudio himself, a shallow fortune-hunter whose worst vice is his sincerity, is given a very fair hearing by Brett Christopher. Xuan Fraser as Don Pedro has a good lonely moment when he all but declares his own love for Beatrice, but fails to follow it up; it could, after all, be the reason that he conceives the plot to push her and Benedick into one another's arms. As his treacherous brother Don John, Anousha Alamian is melancholy in a beret. Jim Warren gets the outlines of Dogberry, the complacent copper, but can't make him funny, possibly through lack of supporting manpower. I have seen Dogberry effectively played as a Sicilian carabiniere, as an Indian policeman serving proudly under the British Raj (hence the malapropisms) and even -- if you can credit such outrageous avant-gardism -- as an Elizabethan country constable. But wherever you put him, he needs a context. In all, this is an enjoyable production, with one commanding performance; it's often superficial but it's never actually false.

Last year David Ferry directed a good Much Ado in Newmarket. He's now moved on, or back, to The Taming of the Shrew, for ShakespeareWorks' Home Depot Theatre (there's a real come-on of a name) in the Beaches. His production is rougher than the High Park show and, in its opening stretches, crasser, but it ends up more interesting.

This time the Italy on stage purports to be that of 1913, with Fascism beginning to raise its head. (Its dominance in the '30s is something the Dreamers in High Park don't seem to have noticed.) Most of the time, though, Italy serves as an exotic backdrop with some funny associations, which is probably much how it functioned for the Elizabethans. There is a town-square band for atmosphere, but characters heroically refrain from eating ice cream.

The first half here is full of one-off gags that don't work, making the stage look untidy. But there are some good comedians on board, and they gradually assert themselves. Christopher Morris's Tranio is a boon from the start, and he helps speed the subplot along. Dylan Roberts's Biondello is a plump little joker who looks and behaves like Lou Costello; by a rather different token, Don Allison's father, Baptista, is a dead ringer for The Sopranos' Paulie Walnuts. Paul Braunstein's Grumio has no antecedents that I can spot, but he makes an excellent complainer. Peter James Haworth's Hortensio has a stammer, which sounds desperate, and it comes and goes, which is confusing; he's also required to do Irish, which is a terrible idea, but he's a benign presence when given the chance. The widow who snaps him up in the last scene is allowed to prowl the stage unscripted earlier on, while another character is given a spurious wife who has to stand there saying nothing while all hell erupts around her. I can see that a director staging the Shrew may feel compelled to do his bit for gender equity, but this is ridiculous.

And for the last time -- though I know it won't be the last time - - if directors feel compelled to update Shakespeare verbally, could they at least ensure that their emendations fit the metre? Could they, for a start -- this goes, too, for the last Stratford Shrew -- learn how to pronounce "choleric"?

This brings us, sort of, to this production's two leads, neither of whom, up until the intermission, seem to have a clue about speaking -- and hence acting -- Shakespeare. Paulino Nunes's Petruchio has the look of an adventurer with a good heart, but he gabbles. Elizabeth Saunders's Katharina seems to be mumbling even when she shouts. There are some good ideas in their love-at-first- sight encounter, but hardly any nuance. We can see that this Kate is a misfit, abused by her family. As her goody-goody sister, Bianca, Marion Day is not only a tease, which is usual, but a bully in her own right, as long as nobody bigger is looking. Saunders comes suddenly into her own at Petruchio's house when she delivers -- as a soliloquy -- her speech about going hungry, and makes it both powerful and searching. Petruchio tames her, as the text indicates, by holding up a mirror of her own behaviour. Nunes, playing his last card, rolls on the floor and throws a tantrum; she laughs, at him and at herself. Game over.

The last scene is splendidly staged, with Saunders's reading of the so-called "submission" speech both lucid and moving, and Nunes capping it with the offer of his own hand, followed by a brisk triumphant goodnight. Ferry's choice of period at this point pays off. In a more liberal society the scene would be ridiculous; here it seems like the only way out for two people who are essentially outcasts, and who are still wearing the raggedy clothes that Petruchio prescribes (a point out of which most productions obliviously weasel).

I don't know quite what comes over this show at half-time, but I imagine nightfall has something to do with it. We can't actually see Lake Ontario, but we're aware of it. And the couple of trees that we can see, through the theatre's open back wall, look lovely.