Not Much Ado About Comparison

With Kenneth Branagh’s crowd-pleasing screen version of “Much Ado About Nothing” still around--albeit at just two theaters in the county--you’d think Shakespeare Orange County might feel some hesitation about mounting the same comedy next week.

But SOC artistic director Tom Bradac, who is producing the show, turns out to be so unconcerned about potential comparisons--odious or not--that he hasn’t found time to see the movie.

One of the most popular works in the Shakespeare canon, “Much Ado” opens SOC’s second two-play summer season next week in the 256-seat Waltmar Theatre at Chapman University in Orange. “Julius Caesar” is scheduled for August.

“I don’t think the movie affects our putting on the play,” Bradac said in a recent interview. “A movie is a different art form. That may seem like a fine distinction, but we’re offering a different aesthetic experience.”

He might have added that SOC is also offering the county’s only aesthetic experience of the Bard on a professional level, now that GroveShakespeare exists merely in name.

When the debt-ridden Grove canceled its 1993 season last month in Garden Grove, Bradac and his cohorts became the sole classical company with an Actors Equity contract for many miles around.

Still, he should have seen the movie. It is gorgeous to look at (no stage production could possibly match its lush scenery) and equally beautiful to listen to. That makes it a very tough act to follow.

Emma Thompson, who has never appeared more attractive on film, sounds sublime playing the feisty Beatrice. She delivers her lines with colloquial simplicity, rare grace and--when necessary--devastating sarcasm.

Baby-faced Branagh, who might ordinarily qualify as Hollywood’s homeliest matinee idol, cuts a strikingly handsome figure with his dashing portrayal of Benedick. Yet he makes a lovable fool of himself with every comic detail in word and gesture.

Not to put too fine a point on it, SOC has its work cut out--especially Carl Reggiardo, who is staging “Much Ado” at the Waltmar in his directorial debut for the company.

Reggiardo did see the movie and came away amused, he said, though less creatively stimulated than he’d expected.

“I was actually hoping it would affect how I dealt with the play,” he noted in a separate interview. “I wanted to see a lot of new ideas. And I think Branagh did a very entertaining job adapting the play to the screen.

“But I also think he simplified--possibly oversimplified--the issues in the play. I don’t think the characters come together as easily as he shows.”

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Set in Sicily, “Much Ado” centers on two couples: Beatrice and Benedick, who are possibly the most stubborn, cynical lovers Shakespeare ever created; and Hero and Claudio, a pair of innocents whose intended marriage is upset by evil plotters.

Although the comedy is filled with laughter as bright and sunny as the Sicilian climate, it has some themes as dark and unpredictable as the notorious Sicilian temperament. And that is precisely what Reggiardo hopes to explore in the stage production.

“Shakespeare is really giving us a lesson in game-playing and telling the truth,” he explained. “Every character during the course of the action is living a lie. They all tell each other made-up stories. And these lies perpetuate themselves, while the characters play more and more elaborate games on one another.

“The thing Shakespeare is telling us, even in a comedy, is that playing games rather than telling the truth gets you in trouble. They may be ‘much ados about nothing,’ but when you deal falsely with people’s affections and emotions, it can have terrible repercussions. This comedy may be very funny, but people nearly die in it.”

In addition to their duties as producer and director, Bradac and Reggiardo will reprise supporting roles from a 1990 Grove production of “Much Ado.” Bradac is playing the clownish Dogberry, a constable whose motley retinue could be the prototype for the Keystone Kops. Reggiardo is playing the resentful Don John, the villain who springs the comedy’s main plot.

(Bradac, the Grove’s founding artistic director, had been with the troupe for 13 years but was forced out in 1991 by the board of trustees over managerial and artistic disputes. In the wake of his departure, Reggiardo and other top Grove actors Daniel Bryan Cartmell, Elizabeth Norment and Kamella Tate also left. A year later they launched SOC.)

Norment will reprise the role of Beatrice from the Grove production of three years ago, opposite SOC associate artist Wayne Alexander’s Benedick. In other key roles, Mikael Salazar will play Claudio; Pauline Maranian will play Hero; Cartmell will play Leonato, and Michael Nehring will play Don Pedro.

Despite the three casting echoes, this “Much Ado” will not resemble the Grove production at all, Reggiardo said. Unlike that version, which updated the play to 1930s Italy and added a conceptual overlay about swaggering Fascists, SOC will set its production during the Italian Renaissance, as Shakespeare imagined it.

Reggiardo intends to highlight the culture clash among the Spaniards who are colonizing Sicily, the educated Italians from the mainland and the Sicilian natives. The closest he will come to a conceptual overlay is the cross-gender casting of Kamella Tate as Borachio, chief henchman to Don John.

“One of the things that impresses me most with this play is that Beatrice is so outspoken,” Reggiardo said. “In the society of the late 1500s, and particularly in Sicilian society, it must have been mind-blowing to hear a woman say the things she says.

“Inspired by Beatrice, I wanted to explore more female angles. When I looked at Borachio and his connection with Don John, it seemed to me Borachio was more intelligent and even leads him along. For example, it is Borachio who gives Don John the evil plot he eventually follows.

“Well, in Shakespeare, the women many times are more intelligent than the men, or at least more insightful. So I thought we could make Borachio a woman if the lines would work. And we came up with a reading of the play that leaves the script intact.

“The cross-gender connection is that Borachio is Don John’s paramour. She has simply disguised herself as a man to be with him after his defeat in the battle that has taken place before the play opens,” Reggiardo said. “This strengthens their relationship, gives her strong motives to plot against Don John’s enemies and reinforces the strong female current in the play.”

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With a week to go before the company’s second season begins, Bradac is satisfied with the pace of subscriptions. SOC has matched last year’s 850 subscribers and may exceed that number by the time “Much Ado” opens, he said.

The two-play season is budgeted at $150,000, of which 70% must be earned at the box office. (Sales of season tickets are expected to come to 45% of the total, with single-ticket sales coming to 25%.)

The other 30% is anticipated from unearned income: donations or in-kind services from such sponsors as Chapman University, which has agreed to back the troupe this season.

“This show is our first comedy,” Bradac said. “I’ve done it three times at the Grove, and it’s always been a success. We’re looking for a hit.”

In other words, the movie notwithstanding, SOC is banking on a marketable commodity and hopes to turn it into much ado about something.

“Much Ado About Nothing” opens July 9, following a preview Thursday, and runs through Aug. 7 in the Waltmar Theatre at Chapman University, 310 E. Palm St., Orange. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m.; Sundays at 3 p.m., also July 11 at 8 p.m. $21 to $23; preview $16. (714) 744-7016.