Valentine's Day 2016: Some Productions of Much Ado(And Other Stuff)

Last year I did a fairly general post about Valentine's Day, which you can find here. Do check it out, it's a good post. Feel free to comment, as I get all comments by email to approve. I spoke about some of my favourite fictional lovers, including Shakespeare's mature lovers, Beatrice and Benedick. We don't find enough of those, IMO. Jane Austen did it with Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, about a girl whose fancy relatives talked her out of marrying the guy she loved several years ago. Now he has come back, when they're both a bit older and her once wealthy family is broke and he has gone up in the world. It's not my favourite of Jane Austen's novels, but still...

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There was an article in the (British, not Sydney)Telegraph about the "top ten" Beatrices and Benedicks, all stage productions none of us will ever see now, though there was a photo of Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson in the film version of his stage production, and a delightful film it was, too.

 Personally, if we're nominating stage productions I'd go for two I have seen performed by the Melbourne Theatre Company - Frederick Parslow and Jennifer Hagan, in a Regency costumed production, with music by Helen Gifford, and in more recent years, Hugo Weaving and Pamela Rabe in 1950s costume, and the Bell Shakespeare Company, set in a circus! John Bell himself and his Missus, Anna Volska, played as the lovers. I admit I haven't yet seen the Joss Whedon film version, though my niece Dezzy tells me it's excellent. And then there was a recording I had of Franco Zefirelli's stage production with a much younger, very, very much pre-Professor McGonagall Maggie Smith and her then-husband Robert Stephens, with a very young Derek Jacobi as Don John. That's one I would have loved to see! And I see Derek Jacobi eventually had his turn as Benedick.

I am amazed at who has played those two roles. One version really went for the "mature" thing and had the roles played by the not-so-young James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave. He could certainly do the voice, as we know after his velvet-voiced Darth Vader, and she has plenty of experience, but Hero would be more like her granddaughter than her cousin, and you'd think he would be long retired from the army. Still, nice to know that once in a while an older woman, even if she has to be a Big Name, can play a Shakespeare role apart from Queen Margaret in Richard III or a Witch in The Scottish Play (Even Gertrude isn't all that old, early middle aged at most). And as a character in one of Kerry Greenwood's novels says, if you aren't playing the king you never get to sit down in Shakespeare, which is no fun for older actors with painful legs.

I was surprised and delighted to read of a production with the Doctor and Donna! Okay, with David Tennant and Catherine Tate. I know he's done a fair bit of Shakespeare - I'm still holding out for a DVD of his Hamlet - though it was her first time and the article says that she did it very well. They had such chemistry as the Doctor and Donna, I can imagine how well they did together in this play. 

I recall one of the Telegraph's top Beatrices was Judi Dench, whom I have seen in Shakespeare when I was in my teens and she was touring in The Winter's Tale; I'm sure she was a wonderful Beatrice. 

I am hoping to get hold of the BBC version(you can still buy them in boxed sets)with Robert Lindsay and Cherie Lunghi. Cherie Lunghi was a firm Beatrice who wouldn't take any nonsense from anyone. 

It feels strange to think that this mature Shakespeare heroine was originally played by a teenage boy. Was Shakespeare imagining women when he wrote his plays or was he thinking, "Now, let's see, young Nat can play this one brilliantly"? 

Something to think about. Happy Valentine's Day and don't eat too much chocolate!