True love ways Colonial’s festive Much Ado About Nothing BY BILL RODRIGUEZ
	Much Ado About Nothing By William Shakespeare. Directed by Harland Meltzer. With Benim Foster, Nigel Gore, Edward Franklin, Chris Perrotti., Gene Farber, Joel Kramer, Liz Laesen-Silva, Kaleo Griffith, and Marion Markham. Presented by Colonial Theatre at Wilcox Park in Westerly through August 1, and at North Kingstown Beach August 6 through 15.

Much Ado About Nothing is a tricky romantic comedy to present convincingly. Partly comic, partly — and starkly — tragic, it takes vigorous action to keep all that oil and water credibly mixed. But this year’s annual Colonial Theatre Shakespeare Festival has done a respectable job on the whole, exceptionally so in a couple of performances.

This one-play "festival" is festive, all right, staged outdoors after pre-show picnicking activity and wine-glass clinking. After wrapping up its usual run in Westerly’s Wilcox Park, the play will move to the North Kingstown Town Beach for performance from August 6 through 15.

The role that holds this comedy together is that of Benedick, the reluctantly amorous young lord. Kaleo Griffith pulls off the dedicated bachelor with an energetic exasperation that’s so necessary for the play. But he also supplies an underlying strength of character that helps us take the later tragic turn seriously, warding off any thematic dissonance we might otherwise experience. Spunky Colonial Theatre regular Marion Markham gives Griffith a run for his funny as the feisty Beatrice, the ostensibly man-hating object of Benedick’s heartthrobs.

That relationship is why Much Ado gets onto as many stages as it does. Shakespeare, in inventing skirmishes in the battles of the sexes, has put more volatile weaponry in the hands of latent lovers — in The Taming of the Shrew they all but exchange gunfire — but never made the wordplay more barbed than here. When Benedick says that a fool romancing her would end up with a scratched face, Beatrice retorts that scratching couldn’t worsen a face like his. "She speaks poniards, and every word stabs," he later whines.

So, of course, their friends in the Florence court conspire to get them together. The same ruse is contrived for each: both Benedick and Beatrice overhear friends conversing, amazed, about how the other is madly in love with them. Before long, bad poetry is being written.

That potential match is comic contrast for a more likely courtship. No less than the Prince of Aragon (Benim Foster), Don Pedro, proposes wooing Hero (Liz Larsen-Silva) on behalf of Claudio (Gene Farber). But Claudio’s suspicious nature is easily triggered, we learn; he gets the mistaken impression that the prince is courting for himself. But things quickly calm down. For a short while.

The prince’s brother Don John (Nigel Gore) — a bastard literally and colloquially — takes the opportunity to cause mischief, perhaps as practice for wreaking havoc. (He has just been forgiven for attempting civil war against his brother, but you just can’t trust those Machiavellian Italians, Shakespeare warns.) When the wedding is on between Claudio and Hero, Don John plots to have Claudio and Don Pedro witness a lovers’ tryst with a woman who from a distance could pass for Hero. Only death, it seems, could rectify this dishonor.

Like his Elizabethan contemporaries, the playwright didn’t think much of the Italian aristocracy represented here. Claudio couldn’t have less depth if he were gilded. When he thinks that his former fiancé has died of a broken heart or killed herself, he expresses remorse, but later in the scene is jesting heartily. The prince is naïve to the point of stupidity, unwarily trusting a brother whose recent revolting behavior should have been fair warning. Even the villainous Don John doesn’t have the wit to devise his own evil — it takes his minion Borachio (Chris Perrotti) to cook up the scheme to frame Hero.

Costume and set design keep us properly enthralled, thanks to Mary Meyers and Christian Wittwer, respectively. The faux marble court set has a useful thrust this year, over a low footbridge, so that characters now and then enter the audience and confide their soliloquies.

This is an unabridged production of a comedy that is often abbreviated for good reason. Repetitious speechifying can be stultifying to 21st-century ears. For example, Hero’s father, Leonato, is played with an interesting alertness by Edward Franklin, but the Bard does not let the character leave any stray thought unexpressed. This play is often weakened when the role of buffoonish constable Dogberry ("O villain! thou wilt be condemned into everlasting redemption for this") comes on too strong — as Michael Keaton did in the movie. Trouble is, an actor needs to get out of the way of an overwritten character, and let outrageous dialogue speak for itself. Joel Kramer wisely does so here, while remaining attentive to comic opportunities. This less is more approach gives us more laughs than Dogberry and his Elizabethan Keystone Kops usually deliver.

As usual with these Colonial Theatre summer productions, the play is cast with Actors’ Equity members in half of the roles. Unlike in Wilcox Park, where donations were requested to defray the reported $20-per-head cost, in North Kingstown there will be an official admission price of $15 ($5 for college students, free to those under 18).