Much Ado About Nothing Alabama Shakespeare Festival Review
Making of 'Much Ado': A March In Ragtime to Broadway and TV
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December 4, 1972
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Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes in the Joseph Papp version of "Much Ado About Nothing."
Rising higher up the wreckage of one thousand thousand‐dollar musicals and disappointing drama is Joseph Papp'south production of "Much Ado Almost Zippo."
By acclaim of the critics and from the receipts at the box role, this is 1 of the Broadway season'south few bright spots—a rare instance of Shakespeare'southward being commercial. Rarer still will be the showing on January. 4 of a three‐hour version of the production in prime number time on the Columbia Broadcasting System telly network while the play is nevertheless running at the Winter Garden.
Every bit with other Papp hits, such every bit his last popularization of Shakespeare, "Ii Gentlemen of Verona," this one was not entirely premeditated.
Last jump, Mr. Papp had two quite different Shakespearean projects in mind—"Romeo and Juliet" as his commencement goggle box venture and a "Much Ado" that he planned to straight himself in Primal Park. His version would have been "a romance between an old bachelor and an erstwhile spinster," to exist played by Jack MacGowran and Siobhan McKenna in a setting of Victorian England.
As information technology turned out, Mr. Papp asked A. J. Antoon to straight "Much Ado," and it was a tremendous spring to Mr. Antoon's youthful, romantic version, which takes place in pre‐Globe War I center America to the melody of ragtime music, stars Sam Waterston and Kathleen Widdoes as young lovers and features an oompa‐ring, a merry‐go‐circular and Keystone Kops. As Mr Papp says, "I have my 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'Muhc Ado' too — and much more.
In tracing the new management of "Much Ado," Mr. Papp gives credit to his ebullient 27‐yr‐sometime protege (he too directed "That Title Season"). "Every bit presently equally A. J. was doing 'Much Ado,'" says Mr. Papp, "they had to be younger people. His ideas are internal and emotional."
Although Mr. Waterston jokingly calls his director "Captain Concept," Mr. Antoon is, by his own admission, no conceptualizer. He deals in images, rather than ideas—shooting them off similar firecrackers.
Equally Mr. Antoon remembers it, Mr. Papp asked him to straight "Much Ado," on "the morning when nosotros stockaded —or blockaded—that harbor [Haiphong]." Although Mr. Antoon considers himself "the nearly apolitical person know," the Vietnam war stayed in his mind as he searched for an epitome for the play.
'Soldiers Coming Domicile'
"Ane day, when I was falling asleep reading the first function of the play, I wondered what information technology was like for soldiers corning home from war," he said. Suddenly he saw happy marching soldiers and heard patriotic announcements on a, loudspeaker.
He realized that he would have to get back before World War I to notice an American menstruation with such innocence and optimism. He idea of Don Pedro as a Teddy Roosevelt blazon. "Rather than as a prince, I saw him every bit an overgrown Boy Scout."
That epitome became the primal to the production, not just in a political simply in a romantic sense. When Don Pedro proposes matrimony to Beatrice, he is not—as is usually the case—offhanded, but in hostage. During the first rehearsal, in the absence of Douglas Watson, who plays the role, the director read the lines to Miss Widdoes. "I said, 'Will you take me, lady?' and she started crying." Since then, that moment has provoked tears from Mr. Antoon, Mr. Papp and members of the audience.)
Mr. Antoon saw a production of the play terminal yr at England's Stratford‐on‐Avon. "Beatrice and Benedick were two sarcastic people—very breakable, with sharp wit." In Mr. Antoon's production, they are "two people afraid to say, 'I dearest you,' and if they don't practice information technology now, it volition exist too late."
Mr. Waterston and Miss Widdoes, both of whom have had long associations with Mr. Papp, would have been natural choices for "Romeo and Juliet," and they were natural choices for this Benedick and Beatrice. As Mr. Papp says, "Sam wears his emotions right out there on the surface — and Kathleen does too. A sure tremulousness, an open‐open feeling. It has to do with innocence and love."
As the 2 of them rehearsed, says Mr. Antoon, "the characters became younger. Once I had told them that I wanted them clearly to be in love with each other, they gave line readings I never expected."
"The thing that appealed to, both Sam and myself," says Miss Widdoes, "is that these people had a hard fourth dimension existence in love. When they hear that they are loved, immediately they can love."
Great‐Aunt Carla's Album
Everyone credits the "collaborative" and "supportive" atmosphere of the rehearsals. Mr. Waterston says, "we started collecting things." Because he feels a particular affinity for the period, he brought in his great‐aunt Carla'south photo albums, with antique pictures of "gentlemen, dressed to the teeth, carrying hods upward to repair a roof." Among other things, he suggested a canoe, and then decided to upturn it and hide behind it.
Mr. Antoon's approach is more than visual than literary, and instead of reading well-nigh the menstruation, he studied Fourth dimension‐Life film books. He brought in a gramophone and suggested a merry‐go‐round for the revolving stage and a Busby Berkeley chorus of umbrellas. He decided to utilise sparklers afterwards seeing a lilliputian girl with sparklers on a beach in Florida.
Peter Link, the composer, offered old Scott Joplin rags as well as tunes of his own. Miss Widdoes idea that her character should smoke cigarettes on the sly and persuaded her managing director that she should ride a wheel, then remembered that she did not know how to ride a bicycle.
When it came to Dogberry, the constable, Mr. Antoon asked himself: "Who is he? A bumbling cop who solves the play inadvertently. What were the cops of that period? What was the comedy of that period?" The respond: Keystone Kops.
Restaged for Tv
Shortly "Much Ado" was completely Antomilzed. Afterwards a successful gratuitous ‐run in Fundamental Park, the play moved with only slight alterations to the Winter Garden. It was restaged for the telly production (replacing "Romeo and Juliet" on Mr. Papp's C.B.S. schedule).
Recently, the managing director sabbatum in the cutting room, editing the record. As enthusiastic as a pocket-size male child trying out a new mechanical toy, he cheered the good scenes, groaned at an occasional bad have. Soon the screen was filled with jubilant people, smartly dressed and speaking Shakespeare while dancing past the light of the silverish moon and Japanese lanterns.
As President Nixon said, after seeing "Much Ado" on Broadway, "I didn't know they could do it that style."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/1972/12/04/archives/making-of-much-ado-a-march-in-ragtime-to-broadway-and-tv.html
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