As classical acting training programs know, if you learn to speak the lines of Shakespeare, you can then perform the words of contemporary playwrights. Alas, it does not work in reverse, as Outré Theatre Company, a relatively new troupe that has had success with modern scripts and edgy musicals, learns with its clumsy attempt at mounting Will S.’s Much Ado About Nothing.
For no apparent reason, director Skye Whitcomb has transferred this comedy of wordplay and romance resistance to Venice … California. That does allow his cast to speak in a less formal, American manner, but the sense of the language, let alone the poetry, still gets hopelessly lost.
At the play’s center are Benedick (Tom Anello) and Beatrice (Sabrina Lynn Gore), two very verbal, cerebral, stubborn souls who are clearly perfect for each other, a fact that everyone but they can see. Their “merry war” of words, however, fails to materialize as they both rush their dialogue in a way that defies comprehension. Both are described as brimming with self-assurance, but the performers’ body language says otherwise and the two muster no chemistry between them.
As a result, the subplot romance between Benedick’s fellow soldier Claudio (Jordan Armstrong) and Beatrice’s cousin Hero (Shannon Ouellette) takes prominence, for Armstrong at least has a facility with the language and projects a conventional leading man image. Shakespeare tosses in a low comic character, a police constable named Dogberry, who is actually supposed to mangle the language. It is usually a sure-fire laugh-getter, but Tim Gore fumbles the opportunity, in part for affecting a Southern good ol’ boy drawl.
And don’t get me started about the two Brazilian acrobats who hold the play hostage with their two interludes of flips, cartwheels and contortions. You could say that they do the least damage to Shakespeare’s dialogue, but only because they remain mute.
MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, Outré Theatre Co., Mizner Park Studio Theatre, 201 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. Through Sunday, Nov. 17. Tickets: $20-$30. Call: (866) 811-4111.
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Nothing irks a theater critic more than a wince-inducing show that is bound to be a commercial hit. Take Menopause: the Musical, a one-joke show aimed at middle-aged women, featuring lame parody lyrics to pop songs. The most interesting thing about it was how women — of all ages — were drawn to it like catnip, making millions of dollars for its creator-writer, Jeanie Linders.
The second shoe of Linders’ has now dropped, a new, slightly less anti-male, girls-night-out entertainment called The ‘D’ Word, as in “ditched, dumped, divorced and dating.”
Linders has again written four women designed for maximum audience identification who lay bare their lack of luck with the opposite sex. Then the play follows them as they move on from an opening speed-dating disaster to their group bonding and bolstered self-images.
For the record, there is Erica (Angie McKnight), a divorced workaholic businesswoman, so busy that she has not had sex for 14 years. There is DeeDee (Maddie Casto), married for 25 years until her husband abruptly leaves her for a younger woman.
Kate (Laura Wright) is still of child-bearing age but wary of relationships, so she just wants to hook up with someone who will be a sperm donor. And the youngest, Jen (Sarah Hester Ross), was engaged to her high school sweetheart until he left her for another guy.
At least the four performers can really sing and dance quite passably, as they demonstrate on actual song hits of the past few decades. More often than not, they sing of female empowerment, in such numbers as I Will Survive, You Don’t Own Me and What Doesn’t Kill You (Makes You Stronger). The songs’ place in the narrative is merely tangential, but that did not seem to bother the audience I saw The ‘D’ Word with a bit.
More a commodity than a show, it will surely be embraced by theaters were Menopause played previously, like the Kravis Center’s Rinker Playhouse. Either The ‘D’ Word is somewhat better than Menopause or my expectations were sufficiently lowered to find it so.
THE ‘D’ WORD: A MUSICAL. Kravis Center Rinker Playhouse, 701 Okeechobee Blvd., West Palm Beach. Through Sunday, Dec. 8. Tickets: $39 – $64. Call: (561) 832-7469.