Bard on the Beach to present Much Ado About Nothing with small but mighty edit

CTV News

a day ago

People line up to enter Bard on the Beach in Vancouver. (The Canadian Press / Chuck Stoody)
To the casual theatregoer, this year's Bard on the Beach production of Much Ado About Nothing will seem delightfully typical of the company's crowd-pleasing spectacles, but to the seasoned Shakespeare fan something might seem afoot.
To modify or not to modify? That was the question posed before director Johnna Wright decided to update her version of the 16th century comedy with additional text by playwright Erin Shields.
Shields had tweaked the text for Ontario's The Stratford Festival in 2023, including a prologue for one of the lead characters and a new scene for the production's fifth act.
Wright assures all the major elements are the same: The production is set in the Italian city of Messina, and the storyline focuses on the two romances between Claudio and Hero and Benedick and Beatrice. The modification addresses a particular element of the storyline without changing the ending, she says.
It is an addition to the script, not a rewrite, that Wright describes as 'giving voice' to a character that is silenced in the original play.
'I was very excited when I read Erin's script because it does such a beautiful job of being true to the play and to the characters that Shakespeare created, but also linking it to a modern audience and how we respond to the kind of things that are happening,' she says.
Shakespeare's original grapples with the theme of gender as it reflects the expectations of women in Elizabethan-era England.
It has elements that Wright says appear in many Shakespeare plays, elements that can be 'difficult to get to grips with' as a modern-day viewer. Often they made gender assumptions or acknowledged societal norms that might seem unacceptable now, she says, but were typical of the times then.
'When you do these plays, you're always thinking, 'How am I going to make that part work?' says Wright.
'Because this is a comedy, and it is supposed to be a happy ending, but there are some things that are kind of disturbing that an Elizabethan audience would have accepted as a happy ending, but we don't see it that way.'
Wright expects the additional scene, which sees the young and naive Hero respond to the violence endured throughout the play, to surprise Shakespeare devotees but to ultimately incite a warm reception.
'I will be very interested to find out how people respond to that particular aspect of the show,' she says.
'I think that most people will appreciate it because it just says what most people, I think, would be thinking when they watch these events. Which is 'this is wrong, this is terrible.' We get a chance to address that, so you don't have to feel that you've watched something disturbing and nothing was acknowledged.'
Bard veteran Jennifer Lines, who has been working with the company since 1996 and will be playing Beatrice in the upcoming production, says the adjustment made by Wright marks a shift in theatre that will hopefully cause a ripple effect leading to the tweaking of other productions where needed.
'I've been doing this for a long time now and I see the need for accessibility and engaging a modern sensibility, and having those broader interpretations,' says the actress.
'Making it relevant and inclusive, it is important, but it is a dance.'
Lines assures the tweaks do not take anything away from the brilliance of the original, a brilliance which, as someone who has performed in the play multiple times as Margaret, Ursula and Beatrice, she says she can attest to.
'It is a play that keeps coming back to me. It's comedic, it's dramatic, it's romantic, it's got everything,' she adds.
'The characters are well fleshed out. There's intelligent banter. It's one of Shakespeare's loveliest plays in my mind, and it's such a thrill to be a part of.'