Much Ado About Nothing - RSC

[cirque]

The casting of the full company for Much Ado is,I feel,strongly divisive. Are we now to have all black,all white,all able bodied or non together. I can see the political reason for this but to open the season in such a statement of division seems totally misguided. Erica Whyman,of course,brings her agenda to the fore but we really now have shifted into statements that will fuel more division. Or perhaps,I just get the wrong message.

[Jan]

There are two types of casting: colour-blind and non-colour-blind. I prefer the former. This cast seems closer to the latter. But I'm not that bothered, Greg Doran did the same with his Julius Caesar.

[cavocado]

Maybe they couldn't find enough English-speaking actors from Messina for an authentic cast, so they're relying on audience members using their imagination?

Seriously, as long as they are skilled professional actors, I think most of us can cope with things like siblings or parents and children being played by actors of different races, women playing men's parts, disabled actors, etc. I can't see why that's divisive - surely the opposite?

[Jan]

Dec 15, 2021 16:19:09 GMT cavocado said:

Seriously, as long as they are skilled professional actors, I think most of us can cope with things like siblings or parents and children being played by actors of different races.

Well like I said that's colour-blind casting which is not really the way this has been cast. 

[cavocado]

Sorry cirque I misread your post. Are you saying it's divisive because the cast is mostly black and you think that's positive discrimination? That's possible, but I don't think it would be divisive, just redressing the balance.

There are a couple of other possibilities:

It's been cast this way because race is part of the concept for this production - hard to tell from the info on the website.

It was blind cast and these were the best actors for the parts.

[cirque]

many of us felt Trevor Nunn was wrong to cast white only for his Rose Henry V1.
I feel this casting similarly does not move us towards integration.
that really was the point.

[Jan]

Dec 15, 2021 20:36:30 GMT cirque said:

many of us felt Trevor Nunn was wrong to cast white only for his Rose Henry V1.
I feel this casting similarly does not move us towards integration.
that really was the point.

That didn’t much bother me either, Nunn explained why he did it - those complaining were too young to remember that he was responsible for some of the first colour-blind casting in Shakespeare. The risk the RSC is running is that by employing a black director and apparently specifying a predominantly black cast it could look like tokenism given that the upper echelons of the RSC are entirely white. I think we can dismiss the idea it was blind cast, as we can dismiss their previous claim they wanted their casts to “look like England”.

This production does however feature some gender-blind casting.

[oxfordsimon]

I am not convinced that turning Don Pedro into Don Pedra makes sense with the world of the play.

There is something balanced between the battle of the sexes in the piece. Particularly the two gulling scenes which have energies that work for the two single sex groups.

I know this is being given a futuristic setting and so the world of the play is necessarily not going to be the Messina we have known in the past.

But there is a difference in gender blind casting and deciding to regender a role. I can't see what is gained by switching from Pedro to Pedra.

I have directed the piece with a cast of 16 equally split between male and female actors. I turned Antonio into Antonia which added the family dynamic. I also had the Watch as female characters. Again this didn't conflict with any of the dynamics in the piece and gave my two strongest character actors great opportunities as Dogberry and Verges.

[David J]

I am for colour and gender-blind casting, but as oxfordsimon eloquently puts it the execution is what matters. I always say paying attention to the story needs to come first before putting your own spin on it so that it makes sense

You only have to look at the Company revival to see the effort they made to swap the genders around.

There's also those times when you had a Doran's African Julius Caesar and the Donmar Shakespeare Trilogy set in a women's prison. Again those shows didn't stop with the casting. The acting and direction made for some of the best interpretations of Shakespeare I've ever seen.

The blurb and casting for this Much Ado About Nothing barely tells me anything really. A futuristic setting were most of the characters are black. Entirely plausible.

I'm only happy that the RSC isn't virtue signalling and selling this production on its casting.

Only when the show opens will we see the director's intentions and whether they work or not.

Though what raises doubts in this show for me is that the company has to go to the owner of Simon-Hartman London to design the costumes for this show. Seriously RSC, you spend the last few years fundraising a costume workshop, putting time and effort to host exhibitions celebrating the best in costumes you created over the decades. And yet you show no confidence in your own designers to deliver costumes for this futuristic setting.

www.simon-hartman.com/

[kate8]

I wonder if the concept of this will be a Noughts and Crosses-type race reversal as I think the white actors are playing servants/subordinates. I like seeing strong and different concepts in Shakespeare, so am looking forward to this.

Re changing a character’s gender, I’ve seen several recently where it was just a woman playing a man, no gender change, as with Cush Jumbo’s Hamlet. And when the gender of the character is changed it can give a different perspective on a play, like the female Duke in the Globe’s current Measure for Measure. I’ve not really seen either approach fail or feel intrusive on the text, but I’m sure that can happen.

[Jan]

Dec 16, 2021 8:47:43 GMT kate8 said:

I’ve not really seen either approach fail or feel intrusive on the text, but I’m sure that can happen.

One example is Troilus and Cressida where one of the key themes is the toxic masculinity of the Greek camp - if you cast Agamemnon as a woman (as Greg Doran did) it undercuts this. 

[oxfordsimon]

I know many enjoyed her performance but I really didn't think that Tamsin Grieg worked as Malvolia in that regendering. She is naturally very gifted and funny as a performer but that interpretation of the character was so out of line with the text and the whole structure of the play that it felt like a massive imposition on the text rather than something that grew out of it.

[Jan]

Dec 16, 2021 11:43:58 GMT oxfordsimon said:

I know many enjoyed her performance but I really didn't think that Tamsin Grieg worked as Malvolia in that regendering. She is naturally very gifted and funny as a performer but that interpretation of the character was so out of line with the text and the whole structure of the play that it felt like a massive imposition on the text rather than something that grew out of it.

However not as massive an imposition on the text as when Anthony Sher played Malvolio as some sort of insane Greek Orthodox priest.

[lynette]

Dec 16, 2021 8:55:30 GMT Jan said:

Dec 16, 2021 8:47:43 GMT kate8 said:

I’ve not really seen either approach fail or feel intrusive on the text, but I’m sure that can happen.

One example is Troilus and Cressida where one of the key themes is the toxic masculinity of the Greek camp - if you cast Agamemnon as a woman (as Greg Doran did) it undercuts this. 

There appears to be these days a lack of understanding of when our old Will  is actually addressing quite a relevant point and imposing one of our own. For example, casting the illegitimate guy in King John as a woman takes away from the fact that he is actually a much better prospect as king within the contemporary situation. But he is illegitimate. A woman wouldn’t cut it anyway then. So WS talking about what kingship is and we choose to ignore it. I’m looking at RSC prod some time ago but they and others tend to do this kind of thing. It annoys the hell out of me. 

[anthony]

This production is set in a futuristic dystopian world. Casting choices could fit in with the context of the staging. In fact, I imagine with the casting of Borachio, it probably relates to the setting choices a fair bit.

There was a wonderful production by Public Theater in NY. It's set in Messina, a black neighbourhood in New York. It's genuinely wonderful:



Much Ado is my favourite Shakespeare play and I'm really excited for this production! 

[harrietcraig]

Dec 27, 2021 13:11:11 GMT anthony said:

There was a wonderful production by Public Theater in NY. It's set in Messina, a black neighbourhood in New York.

Actually, that production of Much Ado (which was performed in Central Park in New York) was set in Georgia, the home state of Stacey Abrams — hence the “Stacey Abrams 2020” banner that can be seen on a building in the background in the YouTube clip.

[fossil]

This will be broadcast on BBC4 later this year.

Went to last Thursday's matinee with low expectations after seeing a few 2* reviews but found this to be a thoroughly enjoyable production. Well worth the hassle of the trip from London.

It used to a cheap and easy journey. Now there are no direct trains and no suitable cheap "advance" rail tickets. As a result I find a only rarely make the trip to Stratford these days.

[cavocado]

A very entertaining production and I liked the two leads, especially Akiya Henry. The chemistry between them wasn't always there - maybe down to Luke Wilson being promoted from understudy, so not having much rehearsal together? But they were good individually, particularly in the comic scenes.

The 'Afrofuturist' setting worked well, especially the music, singing and sci-fi costumes, which were spectacular, but not (in my opinion) in a way that overwhelmed the text - they enhanced the humour and irony of some scenes, and it was nice to have such a strong visual production to reopen the RST. Even Dogberry was fun, and I don't usually have a lot of patience for Shakespeare's clownish characters.

Like fossil I had quite low expectations after reading the reviews, but had a very enjoyable evening, and it was nice to see an almost full RST. Sad though to see the Swan and Other Place still closed.

[fossil]

On BBC4 next Sunday.

[oxfordsimon]

Did anyone watch the screening?

I flicked over, my housemate who loves the play said,"What on earth is this?" And we changed channels again.

[crabtree]

sadly overproduced, grim, and defiantly unfunny.

[cirque]

welcome to Whyman's RSC

[Jan]

Apr 4, 2022 22:24:49 GMT oxfordsimon said:

Did anyone watch the screening?

I flicked over, my housemate who loves the play said,"What on earth is this?" And we changed channels again.

Turned on by pure chance. Some sort of dated disco scene. Not for me. Seems to have appealed to middle-aged middle-class London-based newspaper reviewers though. 

[karloscar]

I stuck with it as there was nothing else I fancied on telly on Sunday night. I enjoyed the performances but thought the production looked awful and the music was pretty bad. Oh so long ago Mark Rylance and Janet McTeer were my first Benedick and Beatrice,and unsurprisingly nobody's come close since. Still my favourite Shakespeare comedy.

[Jan]

Apr 5, 2022 18:34:11 GMT karloscar said:

I stuck with it as there was nothing else I fancied on telly on Sunday night. I enjoyed the performances but thought the production looked awful and the music was pretty bad. Oh so long ago Mark Rylance and Janet McTeer were my first Benedick and Beatrice,and unsurprisingly nobody's come close since. Still my favourite Shakespeare comedy.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a really bad production of it. Looking forward to the NT one.