Much Ado About Nothing's stage at the BMO Studio.
“I had rather hear my dog bark at a crow, than a man swear he loves me.”
Much Ado About Nothing – Beatrice, Act 1, Scene 1
The words of William Shakespeare, the immortal Bard, have returned to Saint John with Loyalist City Shakespeare’s production of Much Ado About Nothing. Since its inception in 2015, Loyalist City Shakespeare, (LCS) has mounted a Shakespeare production each summer, with past plays being A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As You Like It, The Taming of the Shrew and The Tempest.
“LCS is now in its fifth year so we are kind of filling a gap in the city since there is no other formal summer Shakespeare program out here,” reflects Sandra Bell, Director of Much Ado About Nothing, and current vice-president of the Saint John Theatre Company.
“There used to be a Shakespeare Festival run by Elizabeth Chase, who passed away a few years ago. The people who had been part of the festival still wanted to be involved with Shakespeare, so Sarah Rankin and Vince Gregg got LCS started and got me involved in it as well.”
Much Ado About Nothing’s story of two romantic pairings and their ensuing drama and intrigue make for a fun, witty theatrical production.
Bell notes Much Ado About Nothing is almost like a mature version of The Taming of the Shrew. “We have two main romantic couples, a younger couple and an older couple, but this time the problem isn’t with the older couple, but with the younger couple.”
“The older couple, Benedick and Beatrice are a lot of fun; they are very feisty and there is a lot of physical humor with them, while the younger couple is much more naïve and the young man, Claudio, is easily led astray, led to believe that his wife-to-be, Hero, is cheating on him.”
She acknowledges the play has some challenges, “Some questions arise and you must deal with, you can’t just get rid of them, but it can still be a light, fun summer comedy.”
Bell has a history of directing Shakespeare for The Saint John Theatre Company, having also directed The Taming of the Shrew in 2017 for LCS. “The very first Shakespeare production I did for them years ago was in the parking lot out back of the theatre. We called it ‘Shakespeare in the Park-ing Lot.’ That was fun being outside, but you can’t do as much with the lighting or the set outdoors. It’s a little more convenient this time around to have this building – and comfier chairs!”
Tue-Sat, 16-20 Jul: 7:30 pm
“MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING”
BMO Studio Theatre
112 Princess Street
Presented by Loyalist City Shakespeare. https://t.co/C2C3aUqerG #sjevents pic.twitter.com/0cwb9PZK0a— EVENTS SAINT JOHN (@EventsSaintJohn) July 16, 2019
As a woman acting in and directing Shakespeare, Bell brings a new perspective to Shakespeare’s plays.
“One of the things you start to notice is there aren’t many roles for women as there are for men. That is partly because in Shakespeare’s period women didn’t act, it was the men playing the female parts.”
“In this play I’ve had some of the male roles become female roles, which works really easily in Shakespeare. I’ve taken the role of the brother of one of the main characters and made it into a wife and gave her quite a feisty role. In Much Ado About Nothing, I’ve managed a half and half cast; in fact, it might be eight female performers and six male performers,” Bell said.
Bell elaborated on the LCS’s creative process, starting with the selection of each year’s play.
“It depends on the director, what the director is interested in doing, whether they have a vision for the play. Each production has been run with different directors and casts in different years, so we have been getting a lot of new people involved in the company and Shakespeare as well. I’ve had a few new people cast in this year’s play. In fact, I have one person who’s never been on stage before.”
The theatrical experience is incredibly important to the performance of Shakespeare, which the BMO Studio Theatre provides in abundance. As Bell said, “I really love working in this space; with Shakespeare the actors talk to the audience all the time, so they are always gesturing out and talking, asking the audience questions.”
Bell, who is also a professor of Renaissance English at the University of New Brunswick, firmly believes it’s through performance one can truly understand Shakespeare’s words, recalling lots of people say Shakespeare’s language is difficult for them but he wasn’t meant to be read, but rather acted.
“When you are acting Shakespeare, you are doing it not just with the words but with the face, body, props, costumes, setting and your acting partners,” described Bell. “Going to see a Shakespeare play is the most accessible route into Shakespeare because that is what it was meant for.”
Shakespeare’s plays and their themes and emotions have remained timeless since he wrote them, with each century putting their own spin and interpretation. “Shakespeare was popular in his own day and every century since he has been popular. He shows that all layers of society have complex reactions to the world around them and what it means to feel emotions and simply be human. We feel all those things still, but he managed to remove the details that would have dated his work in the 16th/17thcentury.
“Shakespeare left his writing open enough that every generation hence has seen a reflection of themselves in his work and shaped it to their own vision of themselves.”
Loyalist City Shakespeare’s production of Much Ado About Nothing is playing at The BMO Studio Theatre at 112 Princess Street until Saturday, July 20. For more information visit their Facebook page.
