'Much Ado' is much more than a love story
Love, both in the first bright spark of attraction and in the slowly building glow of old flames, provides both heat and light for the Actors' Shakespeare Project's fine, fizzy production of "Much Ado About Nothing." Directed and designed by Benjamin Evett with a swinging '50s flair, Shakespeare's comedy fills the serenely splendid space of Roxbury's Hibernian Hall with a contagious joy.
Of course the joy is tinged, as its author intended, with darker emotions, and the play retains its uncanny ability to hold us in suspense even as we know that all will, to borrow a phrase, end well. The relatively simple story of two pairs of lovers - one young and naive, the other older and more sophisticated, though perhaps little wiser - still teeters on the edge of tragedy, letting us see how easily it could have all gone wrong. And of course when it doesn't, when love does conquer all, the victory tastes all the sweeter.
Kami Rushell Smith and Sheldon Best are everything that is charming as the young lovers, Hero and Claudio, with Smith's shy smiles and gentle whispers providing sweet counterpoint to Best's bolder but still innocent ardor. It's easy to believe that these two youngsters would be instantly smitten, easy to see how the malevolent Don John's trickery could throw Claudio into agonies of doubt, and easy to forgive him his gullibility and cheer for his renewed devotion to his Hero.
But the play rightly belongs to Beatrice and Benedick, who not only get all the best lines but also get to show us what mature, complicated love really looks like. Who better to play these roles than two actors who have been married to each other for nearly 30 years - especially if they happen to be two of the best actors in town?
Evett has sensibly not resisted this temptation, and so we have the pure delight of watching Paula Plum and Richard Snee create an intricate, intelligent, and intoxicating dance between these two prickly lovers. Their verbal sparring matches are expertly timed and delivered with practiced ease; their separate comic scenes, when each is eavesdropping on the carefully planted news that the other is truly in love, are breathtakingly funny; their every glance and gesture conveys a richness of shared history and hidden emotion that feels exactly right for the wary pair. By the time they're openly in love, we are, too.
Some of the supporting performances, unfortunately, are a little broader than they need to be. Nasty Don John is admittedly a one-dimensional villain, a kind of cutout Iago, but Doug Lockwood's prop-stomping business pushes him even further toward caricature; Lockwood does much better work as Dogberry, the pompously clueless constable who helps unravel Don John's nefarious plot. Michael Forden Walker and Johnny Lee Davenport also bluster more than is strictly necessary, though they too have some good moments.
Bobbie Steinbach, meanwhile, plays a couple of comic parts with finesse and also brings a pleasing warmth to the role of Margaret, Hero's companion; her chanteuse-style delivery of one of the production's songs - Shakespeare by way of Billie Holiday - is among the show's highlights. (Snee adds to the nightclub ambience, and hilariously so, by delivering Benedick's best-known speech as a bit of Vegas stand-up.) And John Kuntz's usual suavity feels just right for the "good" brother, Don Pedro.
But it's Beatrice and Benedick, Benedick and Beatrice, you won't forget. At the end, with all conflicts resolved, all sorrows ended (at least for a while), Evett and his choreographer, Kelli Edwards, send the young lovers and their wedding party dancing a happy conga line around and through the cabaret-style tables where the audience members sit. All depart, singing and cheering - except for Beatrice and Benedick, Plum and Snee, who gaze slowly into each other's eyes, smile, and begin their own private dance.
Louise Kennedy can be reached at kennedy@globe.com. 