Much Ado About Nothing / New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
by Nick Havinga
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Barnard Hughes, Charles Bartlett, Frederick Coffin, Kathleen Widdoes, Sam WaterstonDirector: Nick Havinga
Brand: Kultur
Producer: Joseph Papp
Producer: Rupert Hitzig
Writer: William Shakespeare
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 165 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-09-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Kultur Video
Movie Reviews of Much Ado About Nothing / New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
Movie Review: Authentic version of Much Ado About Nothing
Summary: 5 Stars
Since I wrote a scathing review of the 1993 movie version of "Much Ado About Nothing" (directed by Kenneth Branagh) and recommended this version instead, I feel I ought to review this version and give it a well deserved boost. If you like your Shakespeare authentic, this is the version you should buy.
I love Shakespeare. I have seen his plays performed on the stage, on TV, and in the movies. The best productions of Shakespeare are stage productions -- these are the closest to the way the plays would have been done if you had been alive to see one in Elizabethan times. If you cannot make it to a stage production, this version in the next best thing.
Because Shakespeare is dead and the copyright has run out on his plays hundreds of years ago, producers and directors can take any liberties they want when putting on one of Shakespeare's plays. Sometimes the liberties add to the play and sometimes they detract. All of the liberties that Joseph Papp has taken are comic and add to this version.
An example of a good interpretation: I saw a stage version of "The Taming of the Shrew" at ACT in San Francisco in the 70s. At the end of Act V, as Kate puts her hand under Petruchio's foot following her famous "duty of a wife" speech, she turns aside to the audience and broadly winks -- turning a misogynistic speech into a sly triumph for women. The audience roared with delight.
In this version, Joseph Papp has moved "Much Ado About Nothing" to around the 1900s. Beatrice is a suffragette. Benedick is one of Teddy Roosevelt's rough riders. The result is a witty war of the sexes. Slapstick scenes are added by including the Keystone Kops.
Because this is a stage version, it does not contain the beautiful Italian scenery that takes up so much air time in Kenneth Branagh's 1993 movie version. What the heck Branagh's beautiful Italian scenery has to do with Shakespeare is a mystery to me. In Branagh's version Shakespeare's lines are cut to make room for both the scenery and the extremely slow recitation of the lines that remain.
In Joseph Papp's version, the dialog is fast so people who have not read an annotated version of the play first may not be able to keep up. (See negative review below.) However, Shakespearean plays should have fast dialog -- that is the way the Bard wrote it to be played.
Shakespearean comedies are meant to be light and madcap, with mistaken identities and cross-dressing and outright clowning. This is what appealed to audiences around 1600. A good modern version of a Shakespearean comedy compares well to a Monty Python movie in silliness.
There are no big name stars in this version (although I have always been fond of Sam Waterson). The conversations between Benedick and Beatrice are all the more wittier for their rapid fire delivery. (There's something about a slow delivery that flattens out the wit.)
This is a version of "Much Ado About Nothing" that Shakespeare himself would have heartily approved of and enjoyed. I hope you enjoy it too.
Summary of Much Ado About Nothing / New York Shakespeare Festival (Broadway Theatre Archive)
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