Much Ado About Nothing

This isn't exactly a review because I wasn't able to see the whole show. But here are some thoughts based on what I saw.

• The rhythms of African-American casual conversation fit beautifully with Shakespeare's rhythms. In fact, particularly from Danielle Brooks, it was some of the most real-sounding Shakespearean dialogue I have ever heard. A real treat.
• Seeing theatre at the Delacorte in Central Park is always lovely. We had an almost full moon and beautiful weather.
• The Claudio-Hero subplot is ugly, ugly, ugly. The fairly young, fairly multiculti audience certainly thought so. When Hero's dad says that, if she's not a virgin, better she be dead, the audience gasped.
• I theoretically like the idea of having Dogberry played by a woman, But Lateefah Holder comes across as extremely smart and competent so she has to fight against type to play the role.
• Director Kenny Leon plays with making Much Ado political but doesn't really do much with the idea.
• While the choreography by Camille A. Brown and the singing were great fun, they slowed down the show.

I think this will be my last Much Ado, at least for a few years. I've seen many productions, going back to the incredibly charming Sam Waterson-Kathleen Widdows version in the '70s, and over time the Claudio-Hero subplot has come to overpower the Beatrice-Benedick main plot. 

You gotta wonder what centuries of literature would have focused on if writers had simply realized that a woman having sex is not a sin or an awful thing or necessarily that big a deal. Poof! There go thousands of pages by Wharton and Tolstoy and Flaubert and Zola and and and. 

Oh well.

Wendy Caster

(row N, free ticket)

Spring roundup: Head of Passes, Bright Star, The Color Purple, Kvelertak

 

It's been a hellishly busy couple of weeks, but I've managed to see a few shows nonetheless. In the interest of time, I'll spare you my typically long-winded reviews in favor of terser ones. Here goes:

Head of Passes, by Tarell Alvin McCraney, is a modern retelling of the Job story. Set in Head of Passes, Mississippi, the action takes place in the formerly grand home of Shelah, who has a birthday approaching, a recently diagnosed illness she's dreading telling her friends and three children about, and property so badly in need of repair that it's raining as hard in her living room as it is out in the yard. The play itself, which has apparently been reworked since it ran at Steppenwolf in 2013, still occasionally misses the mark: some of the characters are not as developed as they might be, and a few of the plot points introduced early on don't gain much steam. But even if the show were perfect, there's really no way to prepare for the absolutely thrilling ass-whooping Phylicia Rashad gives the audience late in the second act.

Joan Marcus

I know it sounds like a cliche--as does the old "I had to remind myself to breathe"--but hell if Rashad doesn't tear the roof off in this tour de force performance. Being that this is a Job story, I don't think it gives much away to tell you that Shelah shoulders a whole lot of bad news in the second act. Driving the surviving characters away in a heartbroken rage, she stands in the rubble of her ruined house (yet another cliche: the set, by GW Mercier, is worth the price of admission), and the final stretch of the show has her alone, railing for a good half hour at a God she is at once furious with and wholly devoted to. While I've always appreciated Rashad, I admit I never knew she had the depth and range that she exhibits here. She makes mincemeat of a monologue that has her crying, cackling, thundering, raging and rejoicing on a dime. Hers is one of the finest--and possibly most exhausting--performances taking place nightly on a New York stage right now. Head of Passes has been extended, for good reason--see it before it closes, if you can swing it.