A long-term dream will come true for John Gaden when the State Theatre Company’s Much Ado About Nothing opens at the Playhouse tonight. Gaden – and actors William Zappa and Celia de Burgh explain the attraction of the Shakespearean comedy to Murray Bramwell
It was November last year when John Gaden first asked William Zappa whether he knew Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and whether he would be interested in playing Benedick. Zappa recalls:
“I’d been staying with a friend of mine, the actress Daphne Gray, and I said that John had asked me to read for this part of Benedick but that I wasn’t sure. She looked at me in disbelief: “ You’re not sure? But you only get asked to place such a part once or twice in your career! “
“So with that buildup I read it and and the more I read it the more I started to discover why it’s such a fantastic character and why you only get the offer to play a role like it once or twice in your life.”
John Gaden has wanted to stage Much Ado for ages although it is a play which is not often performed. The State Theatre Company production which opens in the Playhouse will be the first in Australia in more than 10 years.
It is not a popular comedy; many readers complain that the twists of the story defy credibility. William Zappa admitted that at first he found the text confusing but in rehearsal he and his fellow actors discovered how structurally adept the writing is and how stylishly the intrigues of the plot resolve themselves in stage performance. He, like Gaden, became a convert to Much Ado.
Co-directors Gaden and Gale Edwards have opted for a 19th-century setting, locating events not in the Messina of 1590, but of 1890 when all Europe was about to see the strictures of Victorian life eroded by the political, social and philosophical upheavals of the modern world.
The play focuses on rigid and often heartless codes of honour. The central calamity occurs when the young Hero (that’s the name of the heroine) is wrongfully accused of infidelity to her betrothed, a lumpy youth named Claudio, and nothing rests until this calumny is set to rights. But the most memorable feature of the play is the splendid battle of wits and words between the characters of Beatrice and Benedick, who in wanting to resist the pitfalls and absurdities of love are in danger of forfeiting its delights as well.
Benedick is the complete Elizabethan gallant but he affects a soldier’s disdain for the artificiality is of courtship: “He hates what happens to men when they fall in love, says William Zappa. They become stupid and they start thinking about what they’re wearing! He starts listening to romantic music instead of bugles and drums.
Beatrice, similarly, is faced with the problem of what you’re supposed to do with your brains when you fall in love. Celia de Berg who plays the part sees her as a strong character but is reluctant to impose a fully feminist reading on the role. The balance of the comedy requires Beatrice to make a transition just as Benedict does; these characters are, in their ways, worldly, but they are inexperienced in the subtleties and dynamics of intimacy.
Celia praises her Beatrice: “She is outspoken and rebelling against accepted behaviour patterns but must be feminine enough to be accepted, in the terms of the play, by the male characters. She cannot be shrewish and must always retain a sense of fun. During the course of the play she learns not to be afraid to love. She is very strong and has a foundation of wit but also has a very soft centre which stops her from being harsh or bitter. There is quite a lot of fury about her encounters with Benedick but it’s not bitter.
“Beatrice is wary and rightly apprehensive about making any kind of commitment to a man who is not going to be her match. She doesn’t want to be tied to someone who is going to grow old like the men around her are growing old, laying down the law for their daughters. She doesn’t want to be stuck in the tedium of life and so would rather encounter whoever turns up and sport with him. But Beatrice eventually learns that she can enjoy being in love just as much as not being in love. She talks about men all the time and has a delicious time putting them down and then finds she can delight in a trusting relationship also.”
William Zappa, equally, is thoughtful about the interchange between Beatrice and Benedick will register with audiences.
“Over the past two decades we have tried to see through the veil of male society and male behaviour and to an extent we should now give ourselves and the public the credit for having made that adjustment,” he says. “Benedick will certainly get a few groans because he so up himself. But we don’t have to make things obvious any more.
As actors and directors we been affected in our lives as well and so it must influence the choices we make – but they don’t have to be statement choices. The play shows men acting according to rigid and arrogant codes but we also see that they can’t cope with the situation they created and they must play their part in restoring a more balanced and just situation.”
In starting the 1987 season with a full Shakespearean production the State Theatre Company is declaring its strength again and building on the strength of Wild Honey at the end of last year.
John Gaden is also paving the way to the STC’s forthcoming production of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.”Both plays deal with a central act of jealousy, he says. In both a woman is condemned on the follow-on a false pretext leaving the rest of the characters to deal with the consequences.
“In Much Ado it lasts for a couple of days, in The Winter’s Tale it is 16 years there are contrasts as well Much Ado was one of the few comedies that doesn’t involve going into the forest or the intervention of fairies; it is resolved entirely in human terms whereas The Winter’s Tale never touches the earth, what we have is a world of strange doings, magic, shipwrecks and statues coming to life. Much Ado offers a comic and comforting view of things while The Winter’s Tale is a darker piece.”
Co-directing a play could be a recipe for disaster but in the case of John Gaden and Gale Edwards it works famously. They teamed up for the production of The Real Thing last year and both are enthusiastic about the benefits for the present project as well. In conversation with Gale Edwards words such as trust, respect and honesty crop up and both insist that the two complement each other rather than strictly divide duties.
For the actors it has meant more collaboration and the benefit of a greater breadth of ideas and energy. They all comment readily on the generosity evident in the rehearsal room.
It also takes the pressure off the director is Gaden wryly observes: “On a big play like this with all the preparation and research, you get awfully lonely when you’re the only one who is answering all the questions. It’s lovely after a run to ask someone – how was it for you?
Everyone is in agreement that the usually long six-week rehearsal time has been a boon. For Gaden it has meant a chance for clarification. “It means knowing where to put the focus, when to get rid of the busyness and went to guide the actors away from naturalism,” he says.
Celia de Burgh is an experienced Shakespearean actor but she has never previously played a character who delivers most of her lines in prose. “Familiarity is everything,” she says. “If you go over something enough and if you keep going over it as long as it remains uncomfortable, eventually the answer will come. That’s why it’s a luxury to have the time.”
William Zappa shares her view: I’m getting more and more joy out of the language. It’s always the same with Shakespeare, the more you understand what you are saying, the more you get amazed at the writing. There is nothing worse than people getting up and doing Shakespeare and not knowing what they are saying. I know, I’ve done it myself. I’ve been halfway through a production and thought: Oh my God is that what that means? What I had done had made some sort of sense, that the audience sort of understood it, but as you get more specific you get more specific understanding, this amount of time in detail is allowed that to happen.”
There is no doubting the time and detail that has been expended over every facet of this production, from John Comeadow’s painstaking lighting designs to Ken Wilby and Mark Thompson’s deliberately detailed sets and costumes.
“The costumes are fantastic,” enthuses de Burgh. Everyone is trying very hard to make it absolutely right and I think that will show in every part of the production.”
Much Ado About Nothing continues at the Playhouse until March 28.
“Much Ado About Much Ado”, The Advertiser, Arts and Books, February 28, 1987, p.1.