Summary 
Light entertainment enhanced with onstage music and a well-choreographed concluding dance, set and costumed in the style of post-Revolutionary America in the 1780s. Darker tones are minimized in an elegant if feather-light romantic situation comedy.
Design
Directed by David H. Bell. Set by Dex Edwards. Costumes by Nan Zabriskie. Lights by Diane Ferry Williams. Sound by Robert Neuhaus. Original songs and music by Henry Marsh. Wigs and make-up by Richard Jarvie.
Cast
Darren Bochat (Drummer Boy), Heather Pete (Hero), Jane Blass (Margaret), David Girolmo (Antonio), Neil Friedman (Leonato), Laura Lamson (Ursula). Lisa Dodson (Beatrice), Christopher Peterson (Balthasar), Kirk Sanders (Claudio), Timothy Gregory (Benedick), Robert Kahn (Borachio), Sean Grennan (Don Pedro), James Fitzgerald (Don John), Paul Slade Smith (Verges), Greg Vinkler (Dogberry).
Analysis
Director David H. Bell sets Shakespeare Repertory's production of Much Ado About Nothing at the pre-Napoleanic turn of the nineteenth century. Bell stages the play within a "specifically non-specific" set that becomes an Italian villa, a church, a garden, and various country manor interiors with quick prop and/or lighting changes. The actors employ five upstage entrances, each featuring slatted wooden gates and all positioned between two large square columns.
The mostly youthful cast sports the breeches and stockings of the U.S. Revolutionary War era as well as the trousers and boots of the early 1800s. The combination represents a subtle sense of the processes of slow change and maturation, as will the depths of newfound love for most of the play's characters. Bell heightens the silliness of the antics of Benedick and Beatrice, as well as of Claudio and Hero, before they each fall into the security of a loving relationship.
Bell's production begins with the drum playing of the Boy. The Boy pretends to wage a serious battle before calming and picking up fife and tabor, in a subtle foreshadowing of Benedick's soon-to-be-revealed romantic fate. The town's women sit at a banquet table opposite to Leonato and the elder gentlemen before a brass fanfare announces the arrival at the main gate of Don Pedro and his victorious troops. The soldiers resemble American minutemen in navy blue waistcoats and black boots, and they carry side arms and sabers.
Bell imbues the production with a giddy festivity that belies the macho posturing of the returning soldiers and the quiet reserve of the awaiting women. When Hero first hears Claudio's name mentioned, she with glee spills the refreshments she is preparing, and the young Don Pedro, resplendent in his dress-uniform gold shoulder braids, slices the celebratory cake with his battle sword. While the returned victors celebrate with arm-wrestling and drinking games upstage - to rowdy chants of, "1-2-3 lusty wenches" - the stage is set for the merry war downstage between Beatrice and Benedick.
The 2.1 masque is staged amid candelabra and bustling servants carrying trays of hors d'oeuvres and champagne. Lushly lit in bright reds and yellows, the women arrive in scarlet gowns with their hair elaborately styled, and they join the men in dancing to elegant minuets, the entire scene scored with piano. In an effort to keep the play's tone light and breezy, Bell employs music and singing throughout: drums and reeds accompany the soldiers' version of "Lift A Glass to Those We Left Behind" following Claudio's 2.1 engagement to Hero; Balthasar croons "Sigh No More" for Leonato in 2.3; and Benedick even warbles his "God of Love" sonnet aloud during its 5.2 composition.
Timothy Gregory portrays a late-twenties/early-thirties Benedick as dashing and handsome but less than self-assured. Gregory gives a sense - in his halting speech patterns, and especially in his fervent soliloquies - that his Benedick is thinking his way through each situation, spontaneously arriving at, then justifying and rationalizing his words and actions. Every onstage character ignores his initial arrival and speech except Beatrice, whom he addresses with a comically slow, "Are...you...yet...living?"
The chemistry between Gregory and Lisa Dodson as Beatrice is immediate, and judging by the other characters' bemused reaction, a long-standing circumstance. Beatrice, like Benedick, is a little older than the younger characters but much less mature than the older ones. In her initial scene, Dodson hopscotches down the center stage stairs, playfully swats Leonato's behind, and seems to rejoice in the 2.1 comments on how she wakes herself with laughing and how she was born beneath a dancing star, or Pedro's compliment regarding her "merry heart."
Claudio scripts the 2.3 deceit of Benedick within the villa, with each of the three "love gods" - Claudio, Don Pedro, and Leonato - reading quite badly from pages they drop, confuse, and rearrange. How they managed to win a military conflict is hard to imagine. Benedick's belief in the obvious deceit is absurdly immediate and comically juvenile, as Gregory drops the serving tray he is carrying, then poorly mimics a cat's meow to explain the noise. After striking the returning Boy on the forehead with the book he has fetched for him, and in flight of an inquisitive waiter, Benedick physically leaves the stage to eavesdrop from the first row of the theatre. He frantically "borrows" coats and purses from members of the audience to conceal himself as he crawls along a short wall in pursuit of his friends. When they have completed their deception, Benedick sits in a woman's lap in the front row, holding her hand but addressing the entire audience, although he sometimes speaks directly to her or looks to her for affirmation or support.
When Beatrice arrives upstage with the dinner bell and metal clanger, she seems oblivious to Benedick's sudden conversion. In response to him, Dodson lowers the bell to between Benedick's legs and "announces" dinner with a particularly resonant ring. As with Benedick, Beatrice is reduced (or elevated) to giggling vulnerability when hearing of the other's passion. Dodson conceals herself behind an overfull clothesline, sometimes posing within the dangling garments to foolishly "hide" from Hero and Ursula. Her gasp at the 3.1 mention of Benedick's love for her is at once startled and joyous, and in her eagerness to hear more, she steps within a washtub of soapy water. Once Hero and Ursula leave the stage, Beatrice gives a joyful dance from within the tub, splashing the stage with delight.
Bell's emphasis on the light tones of the play continues with the downplaying of the malicious deceit of Claudio and Don Pedro by the plain-dealing villain Don John. The incident seems to diminish in seriousness when followed by the overplayed scenes with Dogberry and the bumbling watch. Dogberry is not so much comic relief of a tense situation, as written, but another opportunity for Bell and the cast to display lighthearted silliness. Greg Vinkler portrays a doddering Dogberry in spectacles, comically bushy eyebrows, and mutton-chops, and he speaks in a quavering voice punctuated with grunts and groans and hems and haws. He moves in exaggerated baby steps and haltingly commands the ragtag watch. The watch apprehends Borachio and Conrade by sneaking up on the two villains while frequently halting to pose in ridiculous positions as if they were park statues.
Bell diminishes other potentially dark moments. Don Pedro's longing for a relationship with Beatrice is nearly eliminated, as even Don Pedro laughs off his 2.1 overture, and no mention or hint surfaces again. Also, the ugly 5.1 conflict between Claudio and his compatriots is considerably lightened when the blustering old Antonio insists on fighting but fails to be able to remove his coat. Moments later, Leonato must physically flee the persistent Dogberry, when the constable arrives with important information but does not want to depart.
Bell concludes this Much Ado About Nothing with a celebratory dance by nearly the entire cast that fittingly accents the merriment of the romantic happy endings and maintains a consistent tone of a very light-hearted production.
Note: A version of this article was edited and published in Shakespeare Bulletin, Vol.17, No.2, Spring 1999.