Summary 
Effectively modernized to the American southwest in 1917 - adobe and terra cotta building fronts, a horse-shoe contest, even snakes - this outdoor Much Ado About Nothing is solid romantic entertainment featuring attractive leads, bumbling comedy relief, and over-the-top villains. Enhanced by Mexican-style dances and masques plus music from guitar, fife, and tabor.
Design
Directed by Robert Leonard. Costumes by Tona Schenk. Lights by J. William Ruyle. Set by Dan Robinson. Sound by Woodrow Hood. Original music by Sally Hoffmann.
Cast
Patrick O'Gara (Leonato), Steven Young (Antonio), Deb Heinig (Hero), Rebecca MacLean (Beatrice), Christopher Peterson (Don Pedro), Philip Earl Johnson (Benedick), Timothy Kane (Claudio), Jay Whittaker (Don John), Peter Daddabbo (Conrade), Brad Johnson (Borachio), Roderick Peeples (Dogberry), Jamie Axtell (Verges).
Analysis
Director Robert Leonard modernizes Much Ado About Nothing to Messina, New Mexico, in 1917. The outdoor set is dressed in orange and red adobe with a stage of dark green mosaic tile. Flower pots, wooden barrels, and coils of rope abound, and an obscured fountain of water trickles at stage right. The opening mood is one of ennui, as an acoustic guitar player slowly strums chords, while children and women - including a book-toting Beatrice - languish, their men off at war. The only activity is a sister being chased by her younger brother, who brandishes a snake upon a wooden stick. The children presage the "merry war" of love battles that begin when the U.S. Army, replete in boots, caps, and side-arms, returns in marching triumph to Leonato's southwestern U.S. ranch.
Philip Earl Johnson portrays the February-faced Benedick with dry humor and a drier smile. He delivers his lines with whip-crack precision, but only after a thoughtful pause. In early scenes he seems relaxed, detached, and observational, despite the snap of his words, and he never seems prone to extremes of behavior. Johnson captures Benedick's carefully emotionless demeanor.
Similarly, Rebecca MacLean portrays "lady disdain" Beatrice with a matronly maturity that contrasts with the bubbling girlishness of Hero as well as Margaret and Ursula. MacLean's laconic and bookwormish Beatrice seems to the audience as well as to the other characters a perfect match for Johnson's distant and wry Benedick.
Leonard punctuates the production with clever sound effects - from barking hounds at the soldiers' return to ominous rumbles of thunder at Don John's machinations - as well as with flourishes of onstage original music. The opening's guitarist is joined by fife and tabor musicians for the celebratory masque. A multitude of flowers and balloons, as well as paper streamers of red, blue, and green, adorn the stage. The revelers celebrate with cat and bird masks amid a series of line-dances until the gloom and doom of the goateed Don John dominates immediately afterward.
A cigar-chomping Don John is lean and mean, a comically villainous stereotype who pops balloons with his cigar before dropping the butt in the pool of water. As the tobacco-chewing Conrade looks on, an insanely angry Don John beats a pinata with his riding crop, and Borachio offers him a meek salute of acquiescence.
The pivotal 2.3 trickery scenes delight, as they should. High in the gallery, Benedick self-indulgently tans himself using silver reflectors before sending the Boy to fetch a book. When the "noting" trick begins, Johnson conceals himself behind a terra cotta flower pot, first sliding it away from his suddenly eager face, then along the stone ledge as he moves closer to eavesdrop. When the Boy returns, Johnson desperately shoos him away, and the Boy's reluctance to depart exasperates Benedick. Johnson's glee at the prospect of romance becomes a rejoiceful cry - "the world must be peopled!" - and he leaps feet first into the water pool at the edge of the stage. Now drenched, Benedick shows the sudden extremeness in behavior - eagerness, desperation, exasperation, and glee - to which he has ironically become lost.
Similarly, MacLean's Beatrice scurries with sudden agility to hiding places beneath the gallery where she can eavesdrop on Hero and Ursula. The two ladies stand above, and Ursula's watering of the potted plants and flowers along the ledge includes an intentional dousing of the newly intrigued Beatrice below. Upset by tales of Benedick's lovelorn soul - "he!" - a suddenly girlish Maclean must modify her cry to a donkey's bray - "hee haw" - and then embrace a supporting wooden post with weak-kneed rapture as she overhears and concurs with praise of Benedick's physical attributes.
The intermission follows an onstage horse-shoe contest, amused commentary on Benedick's shaved mustache, and an impromptu "whoa!" from Claudio as the actor slips and nearly falls on a section of the stage slickened by Johnson's leap into the pool.
Dogberry leads the bravura watch scenes that open the second act. He arrives on a makeshift bicycle with a tooting horn and a flashlight "lantern" that bobs crazily. The wild beams of light work well outdoors in darkness, as the second act begins just following sunset. Too cunning to be understood, Dogberry inflicts deadly serious and humorously incomprehensible instructions upon the watch, which includes a powerhouse Tom Leathercoat. The hulking Leathercoat, unlike the other members of the watch, intimidates Borachio and Conrade, and on two occasions he simply grabs each villain, tosses one over each shoulder, and carries them off.
Leonard eliminates any visual of "Hero" being seduced by Borachio, and instead retains only his and Conrade's 5.1 confession. The discomfiting wedding is preceded by the Boy's return and his piqued delivery, finally, of the book Benedick requested back in 2.3. The boy's exasperation earns him appreciative applause. The aborted nuptial is followed by Dogberry's scene with the nebbish Sexton in a badly cut checked suit, slicked back hair, and impossibly thick spectacles.
Leonard presents Hero's 5.3 funeral with a deathly glumness that contrasts with the gaiety of the 2.1 masque. The mourners accompanying Claudio and Don Pedro wear grinning death masks and white shrouds, and they carry burning torches that flicker in the evening breeze. They brandish death-head sticks and clattering skeletons, and they chant as Claudio mourns alone in the gallery above.
The production's conclusion comes with a happy rush and an effortless series of circumstances, and as a final image, Johnson and MacLean give triumphant snaps of the other's heartfelt, love-admitting sonnets.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.16, No.4, Fall 1998.