Sunday Afternoon in Central Park: Boomerang Theatre Company presents "Much Ado About Nothing"

This afternoon from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. we were thoroughly delighted to be in the audience at the Boomerang Theatre Company's vibrant, sprightly and comical production of Much Ado About Nothing.

The Boomerang Theatre Company is an award-winning Off-Off-Broadway theater company here in New York, annually producing a season composed of three programs: these free outdoor Shakespeare productions; an indoor repertory series of new, classic and neglected plays; and First Flight, a new play development series of workshops and readings.

They've been doing these Central Park Shakespeare productions since 1999 and we're grateful we got to see this season's Much Ado About Nothing, directed by Daniel Talbott, and taking place north of the West 69th Street entrance, west of the bocce and croquet courts across West Drive, and south of Strawberry Fields.

There's the usual ambient noise inevitable at outdoor productions, but the actors' voices were strong enough so that, at least for us, in the front row on a mostly dirt (and dusty) stretch, we rarely found them drowned out.

And they use the physical set -- a rock promontory, a cluster of trees -- to good effect. The play took exactly two hours, without an intermission, and it moved fast, as a good production of Much Ado should.

Last summer we saw two outdoor productions of this play, one of our favorites, at Battery Park and McCarren Park. The Boomerang production today was memorable for its strong acting and interesting interpretations of both plot and character.

Much Ado, unlike other of our favorite comedies, relies neither on magic and sorcery nor mistaken identities and gender disguise, to propel its plot and its humor. It's somewhat earthbound, which is sort of nice, in that its machinations and characterizations stem more from very human emotions -- many of them fairly unpleasant.

The actors worked wonderfully together and the action moved seamlessly. As we said, some of the interpretations of their roles were fascinating. Every Leonato we've seen has been played with the stolid authority of the pater familias, but Ralph Petrarca makes the character refreshingly insecure despite all his power; in one scene, he childishly avoids hearing unpleasant information by plugging his ears and saying "na-na-na" to drown out the other character. Claudio's transformation from nice-guy-in-love to vengeful is for us the most problematic part of Much Ado, but Brad Lewandowski emphasizes Claudio's boyishness and thus his turn-on-a-dime transformation is portrayed as a product of his immaturity.

Indeed, adult childishness was one of the themes of this show. Sara Thigpen gives a strong, dynamic performance as the take-charge, sarcastic Beatrice; she has moments when she loses it, too, of course, but none of the men, including her sparring-partner-cum-lover Benedick, are really a match for her. The most interesting performance to us was Erik Sherr's as Antonio, Leonato's brother, sometimes eliminated from productions of this play and often portrayed as a doddering old fool and object of comedy. Here Antonio is dapper, dashing, and passionate; the scene where he goes after Benedick for the latter's treatment of his niece Hero, often played for laughs at the expense of a pathetic old man, Sherr gave this such a fiery, heartful reading that we were moved to tears.

Nate Miller made for an affable Benedick; the actor is equally adept at physical comedy and portraying a sympathetic character self-aware enough to see his own limitations as well as those of others. We've never seen a Beatrice-Benedick pairing (not Sam Waterston/Kathleen Widdoes nor Derek Jacobi/Sinead Cusack) that suggested hot sexual passion, and the same was true of the chemistry between Boomerang's Beatrice and Benedick; but their verbal jousting and body language makes it clear from the first that these two are made for each other.

Colby Chambers as Dogberry and Edward Carnevale as Verges provided a lot of laughs during their rollicking scenes, and we were also impressed with other actors. Hero can be a drip sometimes, but Laura Ramadei made the ingenue bride winningly girlish and enthusiastic without being icky. Sid Solomon portrayed Don Pedro with the customary grace and humor but also gave off an aura of sadness, and John C. Egan in his Saddam Hussein mustache nicely underplayed the petulant villainy of Don John.

A standout in the play was Sevrin Anne Mason, who played multiple roles, including the Friar, with thoughtful energy and variety. But the entire cast did a really good job, and the audience was kept entertained this afternoon. It's always fun to see people strolling or biking by and then stopping to watch, getting caught in the fast-paced action so much that they stay till the play's end.

This production of Much Ado About Nothing had other virtues, including some lively dancing, a couple of cute songs, and a whole lot of energy. It will be at Central Park again next Saturday and Sunday afternoons. We're glad to have finally caught the Boomerang Theatre Company.

Next time, though, we will bring a blanket or at least a towel to sit on, the way most members of the audience, a really nice and appreciative crowd, were smart enough to do. At least they ended up looking as if they'd been watching Shakespeare while we looked as if we'd been playing football. Man may be a giddy thing, but he shouldn't have to get this dirty.

Late Saturday Afternoon in Williamsburg: Black Henna Productions presents "Much Ado About Nothing" at McCarren Park

We had a Shakespeare-in-the-Brooklyn-Parks double header this afternoon, heading from Prospect Park's wonderful Julius Caesar to a delightfully wacky and surprisingly effective and affecting production of Much Ado About Nothing on the grass of McCarren Park.

The play, adapted and directed by Johnny Young, was presented by Black Henna Productions in an appropriately summery setting, Club Messina, a luxurious resort owned and operated by Leonato and his family. Audience members were given leis and the Hawaiian theme provided a great backdrop for the talented and comically adept cast.

Played on the grass between the dull, solid building that contains McCarren Park's filthy bathrooms and the Lorimer Street side near Nassau Evenue, it's a location that usually attracts sunbathers on summer weekend afternoons, and some of those already here, including one canoodling couple, stayed on for the show.

With the audience's beach blankets and picnic food (we got up during Act III and ran over to get lime ices from the nearby vendor, hardly missing a line), and even kids with big beach balls, the park setting was perfect for a Much Ado permeated with grass hula skirts, flowered shirts, drinks with little umbrellas. You could almost smell the suntan lotion in the air.

Although quite faithful to the text and plot of the play - unlike the recent New York Classical Theatre production, this one didn't eliminate the minor characters of Antonio (Cas Marino), Ursula (Regina Lim) and George Seacole (Ari Rivera) - this Much Ado About Nothing's resort milieu pretty much stripped characters like Leonato and Don Pedro of their gracious dignity, which proved rather refreshing.

The characters here seemed like regular people, none of them particularly attractive physically (not to insult the actors, who are perfectly pleasant-looking) and all of them at times imbued with a 21st-century American whiny petulance, a kind of hip-sitcom annoying nature that is really fun to watch in action.

The scheming, cellphone-distracted, predatory Don Joan (Dana Mazzenga) - Don John has been reimagined as a woman rather regularly - here is not as big a contrast with her good-time-Charlie brother Don Pedro (Isreal Scott), who's displaced her as CEO of AraGone Inc. (Aragon, get it?)

He's just a lot better-natured, keeps better company, and becomes friendlier when drunk on cocktails rather than meaner and more hostile and more manipulative.

For most of the play, the Friar (Drew Burke) sat among the audience under a beach umbrella on his own beach chair and blanket. Here reimagined as Club Messina's resident beach bum and spiritual guru, he shakes off his wasting-away-in-Margaritaville torpor to play his guitar and sing, offer some good advice, preside at weddings, and record the proceedings of the resort's inept security force, which under Dogberry (a very funny Ian McDonald) doubles as its lifeguards. The only lethal weapon the clueless Verges (Benjamin Thys) carries is his hair dryer.

The studied informality of this production worked nicely most of the time (on a few occasions, the actors stepped on each other's lines). Benedick (Jimmy O'Neill) and Beatrice (Amanda Doria) seem to have day-to-day responsibility for running the two corporations here for, respectively, Don Pedro and Beatrice's uncle Leonato (Kevin Schwab, nicely outfitted in a tropical-weight white suit, a soul patch and a sometimes-swinging golf club), and basically they're the most sensible characters at this beach resort - but they're not that sensible, although they're quick with insults (always pretty sensible, actually).

The play's most fortunate reinvention is making Antonio not Leonato's brother but his business partner and life partner. Cas Marino comes close to running away with the play in his portrayal of Antonio who's given to demurely adjusting his hot-pink dress at crucial moments. What's remarkable about Marino's performance is that he eschews easy laughs and broad comedy, and by the end there's the suggestion that he's the smartest one in the family.

Tim Robinson plays the sleaziest Borachio we've ever seen, but he's pretty well matched by Susan Erenberg's gum-chewing, rainbow-haired, headphoned Constance (as the "good twin" Margaret, she's more reserved but still slightly sleazy). With Mazzenga as Don Joan, their scenes are played fairly broadly, and their villainy is stupid enough to register as funny.

It was a relatively cool end for a very hot and humid July, but in the sun of the late afternoon, it was still a bit uncomfortable (we wished the cast had lent us some of the sunscreen they applied before the show began; the lei was nice, but the plastic around our neck made us hotter). Yet the audience stayed involved, including this little brother and sister. They couldn't possibly have understood a lot of what was going on, yet they were laughing regularly and seemed intently involved in the play.

Except for the funny chase scene by the Keystone Cops of Club Messina after the bad guys and the few characters who sat among us (notably the friar and Seacole and Dull, played by Mike Honda), the cast didn't wander into the audience. Working without scenery - although the hedges by the building in the back provided a good place for Benedick and Beatrice to listen in on conversations planned for their benefit - the action moved swiftly and we were surprised at how lucky they seemed to avoid the myriad distractions. (A momentary helicopter overhead, drowning out dialogue, was the worst offender, and that's nothing.)

As the ingenue couple whose marriage provides the MacGuffin for the comedy's goings-on (and the course of their on-again, off-again, pretending-to-be-dead, on-again romance doesn't really make sense except maybe as an alternate history for Romeo and Juliet), Melissa Meli as Hero

and Charley Layton as Claudio are jewels: very cute and sweet and even caring but, oh, are they stupid, each in their own way. But as with most of the characterization in this production, everything is just subtle enough to skirt ridiculousness.

We were afraid we might be a little too theater-weary for Much Ado in McCarren Park after coming from an earlier Shakespeare play, as well as an outdoor Cyrano last night, Medea the night before, and a play at Lincoln Center Out of Doors on Wednesday. But we weren't tired or bored for a minute at Black Henna Productions' performance.

Kudos to director Johnny Young, assistant director Malini Singh McDonald, stage manager Robert Babecki, costume designer Deborah Erenberg and everyone involved in bringing outdoor Shakespeare to Williamsburg and Greenpoint.

Monday Night in Battery Park: New York Classical Theatre presents "Much Ado About Nothing" in and around Castle Clinton and all over Battery Park

(Pics of production courtesy New York Classical Theatre Official Fan Facebook page)

We've seen a lot of productions of Much Ado About Nothing over the years, but for us, the gold standards have been two that we saw well over a quarter of a century ago: in the fall of 1984, when the Royal Shakespeare Company brought a production starring Derek Jacobi and Sinead Cusack to the Gershwin Theatre, and way back in 1973, the classic New York Shakespeare Festival production with Sam Waterston, Kathleen Widdoes, Douglass Watson (our idea of a matinee idol) and Barnard Hughes in a rollicking staging set in the Gay 90s (the 1890s, of course).

Tonight, in and around Castle Clinton and the surrounding gardens, vistas and monuments of Battery Park at the tip of Manhattan, we saw the New York Classical Theatre's magical production of Much Ado, which at this moment seems to us as magical experience in Shakespeare as the other two.

Now in its eleventh season of outdoor performances, New York Classical Theatre stages "Shakespeare on the Run," and we got more physical exercise tonight than we did at any other production of the Bard's work, moving from location to location around the park - we lost count, but to maybe ten or twelve different places - as different scenes unfolded. Yet it seemed to work smoothly; the production company obviously has this down to a seamless science, as actors managing to stay in character as Dogberry, Borachio or Margaret directed us as to where to proceed next.

We don't have any photos of the play except the one we took of the program at the Battery Park/Castle Clinton sign on our way out, on top of this post, since cameras are forbidden. And that makes sense, given that a lot of the special charm of this movable feast of theater comes from the surprise not only of what happens next, but of where the audience goes next, and in the variety of gorgeous settings provided by the venerable Castle Clinton, the sumptuous view of New York Harbor with ferries to Staten Island and the Statue of Liberty pulling in and out, the stately pylons of the East Coast Memorial, or the modest dignity of the Walloon Settlers Monument.

The production clocked in at a swift two hours as superfluous parts of the play (and three characters, Leonato's elderly brother and a couple of his household's servants) are pared away. New York Classical Theatre's artistic director Stephen Burdman, experienced as he is in these stages, made the cuts wisely, and the play's logic of movement seems entirely natural. We have to give a hand to those in their recognizable company T-shirts who served as guides as to where to go, where to sit, and how fast to get there. As we were told at the start of the play on the steps in front of the round sandstone fort that is Clinton, "You can always have a front row seat if you walk fast."

We were a large group, and the movement fostered a camaraderie among the audience, and at times, as at the masqued ball, when we were supplied with masks and encouraged to find a dance partner, we joined the action as the nobles or townspeople of Messina. At the ball, we didn't dance, but found we were always the first ones at one spot or another within Castle Clinton's round enclave as we'd reviewed the play this morning and so were able to get close to Borachio and Margaret, or the disguised Beatrice or Benedick, or whichever couple we knew would be speaking next.

The production was set in the late 1940s, with Don Pedro, Benedick, Claudio and the villainous Don John, as Naval officers and sailors returning from World War II with the bubbly feelings of giddy relief epitomized by that victory as seen in the iconic Times Square kiss between the sailor and nurse in Alfred Eisenstadt's photo.

Much of our pleasure in Much Ado, and probably most people's, is in the witty repartee of Beatrice and Benedick, somewhat older and more weathered than most of Shakespeare's lovers (they are rare in that they have a history, a backstory alluded to frequently but never quite delineated).

Here there's a wonderful mix that brought to our mind two movie roles from the period: the lithe, blithe sailor Benedick played by Thom Rivera, made us think of a wisecracking Frank Sinatra in On the Town (as in the apt "the Bronx is up and the Battery's down"), and the saucily caustic yet hidden vulnerability Beatrice of Kim Stauffer, in her sensible but sexy wide buttoned shirt and wide pants conjured up Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. It was a perfect match/mismatch/match and the linchpin of the production.

The more innocent pairing of the ingenues Hero and Claudio was well represented by Kristen Calgaro (adorable in her sweet late 40s period dress and the white socks and Mary Janes) and Ari Brand, who had the requisite callowness that can turn adolescent infatuation into an impulsive anger and desire to inflict humiliation on a girl he mistakenly think has wronged him.

That dark heart at the center of Much Ado About Nothing gives what would otherwise be a piece of fluff its true substance, as does the play's awareness, in Hero's plight, that life is fragile and fleeting. The New York Classical Theatre production brought out the comedy's joys and its sideways glance at evil and tragedy. In some ways, it's a Romeo and Juliet whose friar's plot goes off without a hitch, being closer to tragedy than any of Shakespeare's similar romantic comedies. (Nick Salamone gets a nice turn as the friar in the failed wedding scene.)

As Don Pedro, Christopher Cass has the resident dignity - like the memorable Douglass Watson, whom we saw so memorably in the role back in 1973, he's a daytime drama veteran - but this is a prince and commander who knows how to have fun and who finds pleasure in facilitating and yes, manipulating, fun for others. He's the dominant figure in Messina, although Leonato, here played by a nattily-attired, pitch-perfect John Michalski, gives him a run for his money, and their scenes together are wonderful.

Don John (Fred Rose, whom we've seen over the years on TV and stage) here is subtly oily enough to be rather charming, and Borachio (Cooper D'Ambrose) comes close to stealing a couple of scenes with his own raffish charm. He's nicely paired with Blair Baker as a friendly, bubbly Margaret; we don't know if the walking cast on one of her legs was part of the production or a medical necessity, but either way, it made Margaret that much more endearing. This couple is highlighted here as we haven't seen in other productions, and it's all to the good. His scenes with both Don Pedro and Conrade (Robbie Tann) are marked by cool bits of business.

Dogberry (Donald Grody), with his bumbling malapropisms, of course, is nearly always a delight, and here in his scenes with a less-stupid-than-he-seems Verges (Kevin Orton) and the other characters, the clueless constable elicits lots of laughs but also seems both ingratiating and oddly dignified. He and Verges, after all, right the order of things in messed-up Messina.

The settings, natural and man-made, were a gift (as was the fact that although a few drops fell and we could see ominous clouds and forked lightning over Staten Island at a scene by the water's edge, we avoided rain), and as always in outdoor productions, the outside world can sometimes serve fortuitously, as did the few moments of audience interaction as when a young boy, after a furtive Beatrice picks up a large handbag from an audience member in an attempt to hide herself, yelled out, "Give her back her purse!" -- well, the actors turned it into a priceless moment.

The whole production of Much Ado About Nothing was, for us, priceless, though we gave as generously as we could after the play ended in an exuberant swing-era dance spectacular in the manner of classic movie musicals as even the play's nominal villains joined in the fun. From the cast (almost all Equity) to the costumes to the music to the choreography to the later-evening lighting (sometimes supplied by the facilitators' flashlights, surprisingly effective), everything seemed to work perfectly.

So it may have been priceless but we gave what for us is a generous donation, since New York Classical Theatre relies on individual contributions for sixty percent of its revenue.

This production will again appear at Battery Park on 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 26, 30 31 and August 1, but if you can't make one of those two performances, it will move to Central Park (meet at West 103rd and CPW) for four more performances starting on August 21. It's a terrific evening in outdoor Shakespeare.