Much Ado about the British Museum

Yesterday I was feeling loads better, so naturally I wanted to get out of my flat for longer than my seemingly daily trip to Sainsbury's and being on a budget I decided that visiting a museum was the best route. Settling finally on the British Museum I took off for Holborn Station. Now two years ago (when I attempted this blog in the first place) I lived just four blocks or so from this fantastic museum, however I only visited it I think twice on my stay. The strange thing about this visit was that I was only there for maybe four or five hours and I managed to go through the entire museum. For me this is insane! I usually take hours going through one exhibit rather than an entire museum with so many treasures. Maybe it was the fact that I was just getting over being sick, or the amount of people there that put me off, or just the fact that it was so hot in there (seriously, why is that museum so hot?) but I didn't want to stay and read all the placards. I took pictures sure, but didn't stay long. Oh well, maybe I'll give it some time and a rainy day and try again.

This morning I woke up and checked my laptop like I always do. And as I did the rounds around all the social media sites I am registered on (there's a lot), I was reminded via the Old Vic's twitter page that they were doing a production of "Much Ado About Nothing" with Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones. So I got the special "Under 25" ticket (only £12 if you're under 25!) and went to a play for the first time, by myself.

So here is my review of the play, if you are interested in that sort of thing:

The set was bland. You know that Ikea desk that is really long and fits basically over your bed? It kind of reminded me of that. It was a relatively empty stage (save for a chair and a record cabinet) and this giant desk thing and everything was the same shade of dark wood grain (it wasn't what I would choose for cabinetry let alone an entire set). They also used miming in the hedges scenes (clipping the hedges back), which would have been fine if they had used the miming elsewhere in the play. But it was just for the scene with Hero and Ursula tricking Beatrice into thinking Benedict was in love with her.

Then there is the question of the plot. They set it in the English countryside in 1944. Now the farm where Beatrice and Hero's families live is right next to a US Air Force base that is housing the Tuskegee Airmen (or another regiment along those lines). This is a really cool idea, apart from the fact that Don Pedro and his men are returning from a battle in which nothing actually happened, which probably wouldn't have happened in 1944. This meant that Don Pedro and all his men were to be African American. Again, great idea. But that means the British actors have to speak with American accents, which some of them can do, but others...not so much. Now a largely British audience wouldn't notice the small pronunciation mistakes and probably don't notice when someone who is supposed to be from Tennessee (as marked in the program) suddenly slips into a Texas drawl. And you know, no one is perfect so I do not hold the actors at fault for this, accents are hard to do when you have a certain way of saying things. However, if the dialect coach is doing their job correctly, they would have marked these things and I should not notice them this late in the run?

On to the acting. James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave are fabulous actors, there is no denying. That being said I really think that something was amiss in this production. Now I am all for changing things up a bit and casting Beatrice and Benedict as two older people, in fact that was one reason why I was so excited to see the show, but it didn't really work for the characters. The line deliveries were skewed somewhat and it made the play seem to drag on. Jones' lines kind of ventured into the realm of an old man getting lost in thought then forgetting what he was talking about to begin with. Redgrave even teetered on the edge of some crazy spinster aunt. Although I think that Beatrice is a little easier to pull off than Benedict is (in this sort of production) but both of them just fell flat for me. The man playing Don Pedro I actually thoroughly loved, did a really fantastic job (except he said "issue" the British way, not the American way and it drove me nuts). Don John, was creepy and sketchy as hell, which was great, but his accent was way forced which was not. Hero was too bland for my taste, and Claudio was a little too emotional for what a man in 40's would have acted like, I think (but then again this is Claudio we're talking about)

So in conclusion, age-blind casting is great, when done correctly. The characters don't feel like they should when they are played in their 70's and 80's-- it's a different play then. And when your directing is as bland as your set, it leaves you with a very sparsely laughing audience and a rather lackluster "Much Ado".

All in all, I was so happy to go out and see a show. It's been too long and my soul feels full, albeit a little disappointed in the show.