OSF’s ‘Much Ado’ is the Bard at his comedic best Bob Abelman Cleveland Jewish News, The News Herald, The Morning Journal Member, International Association of Theatre Critics I’m no stranger to “Much Ado About Nothing,” but after seeing the Ohio Shakespeare Festival’s current production I feel as if I’ve finally seen this romantic comedy as it was meant to be seen. The story is set in the idyllic Italian town of Messina in the late-16th century, where we are invited into the home of Leonato (Robert Hawkes), a respectable nobleman living with his lovely young daughter, Hero (Tess Burgler), his sharp-tongued niece, Beatrice (Lara Mielcarek), and his brother, Antonio (Jim Fippin). They are visited by soldiers returning from war, including Don Pedro (David McNees), who is a close friend of Leonato’s, the earnest Lord Claudio (Joe Pine), the self-possessed Lord Benedick (Bernard Bygott), the malcontented Don John (Jason Leupold), and their assorted companions. Soon, Claudio falls in love with Hero and Hero with Claudio, and nothing seems capable of keeping them apart, though Don John tries mightily. Benedick hates Beatrice and Beatrice hates Benedick, and nothing seems capable of bringing them together, though their friends have other plans. Recently, I attended a Bollywood-inspired version of this play that was set in India and opened with a bharatanatyam dance accompanied by the Elizabethan song “Sigh No More, Ladies” translated into Hindi. Before that I saw a Great Lakes Theater production that transported its characters to the end of World War I. I’ve also seen the play turned into a black and white indie film set in modern-day California as well as an overproduced Hollywood movie overstuffed with A-listers like Denzel Washington as Don Pedro, Emma Thompson as Beatrice, Kenneth Branagh as Benedick, and Keanu Reeves as Don John. The play’s prevalence of accessible prose rather than the poetic verse that typically dominates Shakespeare’s comedies has no doubt encouraged these many inventive manifestations of the work. The absence of absurd Shakespearean conventions like cross-gender twins and interfering fairies make room for such folly as Bollywood and Keanu Reeves. But the OSF production demonstrates that this brilliant play plays best as written – that is, set in the 16th century, performed live, and occurring in a space similar to where it was conceived: a small-scale, Elizabethan-style stage under a canopy of stars. And under Terry Burgler’s unabashedly playful direction, this “Much Ado About Nothing” is the joyous affair one imagines being performed in the open-air playhouse in London that, in 1599, would become the Globe. For the rest of this review, go to: http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/columnists/