There’s a house near Albert Park Lake in Melbourne that is famous for its famous façade – the face of Pamela Anderson. It was built in 2000 by ex-footballer Sam Newman to the aggravation of his neighbours; he sold it two years later, having never lived in it. It has changed hands several times over twenty-five years, but the image of Anderson remains: billboard-sized and frozen in her image as Baywatch star of the 1990s.
Set
designer Anna Cordingly uses a version of the Newman House, originally designed
by architect Cassandra Fahey, as the centrepiece of a new production of Much
Ado About Nothing, which opened at the Melbourne Theatre Company’s
Southbank Theatre last night. It’s as striking on stage as it is in reality,
because of Anderson’s face, of course, but also because it captures the wealth
that surrounds the characters of the play – and it’s an icon of celebrity and
unexamined misogyny.
After MTC’s
production of Rebecca, which used the same cavernous stage to echo a
large, mostly-empty mansion, keeping the edges in shadow so the audience could
never see the full expanse, for Much Ado, we can see everything. The
back and side walls of the stage. The lighting rigs left, right and above.
Stagehands can be spotted carrying washing baskets back and forth. Actors are getting
changed in the exposed wings, if not right in front of us. It’s Brechtian
minimalism on the one hand, but it’s also stuffed with props and furniture and a
flagpole that goes so far up, you can’t see the flag at full staff.
These bold
choices, on full display as the audience enters the theatre, are a simple,
elegant way of bringing us into this world of rich people, who live near the
beach and have a lot of time on their hands when they are not sending their
boys off to war. It’s a hell of an introduction of Shakespeare’s sort-of
romantic comedy.
MTC Associate
Artist Mark Wilson directs the production with an eye for turning the comedy to
uproarious without losing sight of the fact that for a play that claims it is
about “nothing” is full of complex satire on gender and gender roles. Wilson is
an International Fellow of Shakespeare’s Globe in London and before his recent
collaborations with Declan Furber Gillick on Bighouse Dreaming and Jacky,
Wilson was known for his radical Shakespeare adaptations like Anti-Hamlet,
Richard II and the confronting, unforgettable Unsex Me. We’re in
great hands.
Many modern productions of Shakespeare choose to set themselves in a distinct time period or in a particular genre or style. Wilson has as much fun with not defining when and where as many shows do in adhering to the boundaries they’ve set themselves. It’s ostensibly modern day, without worrying about why one of them is a Prince or the holy man is still called Friar. But as soon as you’ve gotten used to Karine Larché’s modern day, middle-class dress-sense, there’s a masquerade ball with everyone dressed in Elizabethan costumes and the most impressive cock-pieces you’ve ever seen.
While
Fayssal Bazzi and Alison Bell are suitably biting, teasing and alluring as the conflicted
Benedick and Beatrice, the surrounding ensemble is next-level, wrestling with
multiple characters each – the miscommunications and misinterpretations of Shakespeare’s
text further complicated by choices for doubling that increase the absurdity.
Julie Forsyth
and Syd Brisbane are delightful as bumbling cops, but Brisbane also captures a
Lenato desperately trying to keep his house in order. Forsyth entertains in
equal measure as the very-tired Friar and a champagne-sozzled Ursula, Hero’s
lady-in-waiting.
Chanella
Macri steals the show every time she’s on stage, as Bastard "Don John" in a terrible (and
hilarious) wig, but also as the very clever Margaret, a Lady’s Maid. Her sex
scene with Miela Anich’s Borachio was so funny, I thought I was going to pass
out from all the laughter. Anich must switch between bogan Borachio and central
character Hero and does so without blinking, crafting two unforgettable
performances.
For a comedy,
a lot of the laughs come from offhanded meanness – a staple that remains in a
lot of “enemies to lovers” romances today. This production finds a way to make
some sense of the cruelty flung between characters without mistaking it for simple
comedy. Yes, a lot of laughs come from sarcasm, but this show doesn’t let the
soldiers get away with their casual misogyny, for example. In most cases, the derogatory
comments are allowed to land with a thud or the characters are shown to be
awful or fools. The police characters, for example, are never allowed to use
their power without it backfiring on them. Some of this is in Shakespeare’s
text, but Wilson sharpens the point by letting a lot of the characters be
hoisted by their own petard.
I expected
the waves of laughter, but a lot of the opening night performance was punctuated
by applause. Scene after scene ended with the audience putting their hands
together because every piece of this puzzle contained a myriad of unexpected delights.
Small details in character and costume and performance. Large moments of
slapstick. This is Shakespeare’s comedy in the hands of the most extraordinary
theatremakers, finding new ways to illuminate this classic text.
MTC has delivered
another strong season, but Much Ado About Nothing is one of the best
shows I’ve seen anywhere this year.
- Keith Gow, Theatre First
Much Ado
About Nothing runs
until December 19
Photos: Gregory Lorenzutti
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