Theater Review : The Fun to Do in ‘Much Ado’ : A Smart, Lighthearted Romp Brings Comedy to the Fore at the Old Globe

SAN DIEGO — Did anyone else think Kenneth Branagh’s film version of “Much Ado About Nothing” tried too hard to bewitch, its Beatrice and Benedick too pleased with their own cleverness? For those viewers still in need of an antidote to Branagh’s overrated archness, Jack O’Brien offers a “Much Ado” at the Old Globe that is smart and lighthearted, a production that Branagh should be forced to watch.

For one thing, O’Brien’s Spanish-flavored “Much Ado” (set in Goya’s Spain, 1828) is uninterested in being cute. He gives us a Beatrice (Katherine McGrath) and Benedick (Richard Easton) of a certain age. Their wit and distaste for wooing comes not from youthful spirits but from long, hard experience. They are acerbic, not impudent. If anything, they help prove how boring and untrustworthy earnest young love is--a moral born out in the tale of Beatrice’s cousin Hero (Nike Doukas) and her shallow suitor Claudio (Jonathan Walker).

Although he can provide no explanation, O’Brien doesn’t ask us to forget that Beatrice looks old enough to be Hero’s mother, and Benedick the girl’s father. He has his stars whip out reading glasses at one point to decipher a couple of billets-doux.

Easton--who last year at the Old Globe stole the show as a variety of party guests in A.R. Gurney’s “Later Life”--is superb. Here looking remarkably like Salvador Dali, Easton is not afraid to be foolish, and his sly, narrow eyes follow his own progression from confirmed bachelor to ardent wooer with jaded self-knowledge. Admitting his own hypocrisy would be too exhausting. But he is not too tired to acknowledge the miracle of love. His mild surprise in finding himself capable of this delight so late in life is wonderfully touching.

As Beatrice, McGrath’s task is harder. This play places a premium on the severe price of dishonored maidenhood. To be a young lady with sexual experience is to be as good as dead. So, while Benedick comes off as a man of the world, Beatrice, we must believe, has scared off a decade or two of suitors with her sharp tongue--not out of fear or lack of appetite, because she is a fairly fearless heroine.

This Beatrice would have had to gain her wisdom and confidence in a virtual cloister, an unlikely situation that provides an unfair but palpable problem for McGrath, who answers it with a spirited performance. It doesn’t bother me, she seems to say, so it shouldn’t bother you.

O’Brien takes another liberty: He directs this as a comedy through and through. Even the baddest villian, Don John (Don Sparks), gets inventive bits of visual gags that pay off at terrific rates. In this case, the tall, scowling Don John, always in black, harbors an unnatural fear for a flower pot that no matter what he does he cannot avoid knocking over.

Additionally, the play’s true comic characters, the dimwitted Dogberry (Dakin Matthews) and his even dimmer assistant Verges (Jonathan McMurtry), are vividly funny. Matthews plays Dogberry as a fat constable with a Texas sheriff twang, all puffed up in a dog-earred Napoleonic costume. McMurtry’s Verges is a Dickensian clerk with stringy white hair and a long, pointy nose that actually seems to be melting right off his aged face. They make a little comic ballet out of incomprehension.

There is a dark center to this otherwise lighthearted courtship comedy. Poor Hero. Even the title of the play mocks the gravity of the wrong done her. O’Brien further marginalizes the faux heroine by exposing her already awful fiance Claudio to be so eager to believe in his beloved’s disgrace that he doesn’t even need to witness it with his own eyes.

As Hero’s kindly father Leonato, Keene Curtis forgoes his usual sharpness for a paternal benevolence. William Anton is a sweetly teddy-bearish yet fallible Don Pedro, with a Rembrandt-like nose that costume designer Lewis Brown calls attention to at one point by dressing him in a dark, wide-brimmed black hat. Fred Benedetti and George Svboda are two strolling minstrels on classical Spanish guitars. They set a lovely mood that the actors sustain for most of the evening.

This “Much Ado” is never pushy, and is wonderfully confident of its charms. O’Brien gives the actors room to play and elaborate their emotional states. At one point Beatrice starts to leave the courtyard after an encounter with her lover. She makes two false exits before she remembers where she is going, pausing each time to smile at how Benedick has addled her brain. That’s what this production does--it takes time to savor the many stupid things we do and say when we’re in love, and also appreciate how very smart it makes us.

* “Much Ado About Nothing,” Old Globe Theatre, Balboa Park, San Diego, Tuesday-Saturday, 8 p.m., Saturday-Sunday matinees, 2 p.m., Sunday, 7 p.m. Ends Feb . 26. $20-$36. (619) 239-2255. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

William Anton: Don Pedro

Richard Easton: Benedick

Jonathan Walker: Claudio

Maurice Mendoza: Balthazar

Don Sparks: Don John

Leo Stewart: Conrade

Marc Wong: Borachio

Keene Curtis: Leonato

Nike Doukas: Hero

Katherine McGrath: Beatrice

Henry J. Jordan: Antonio

Anna Cody: Margaret

Elisa Llamido: Ursula

Dakin Matthews: Dogberry

Jonathan McMurtry: Verges

An Old Globe Theatre production. By William Shakespeare. Directed by Jack O’Brien. Set designer William Bloodgood. Costumes by Lewis Brown. Lights by David F. Segal. Sound by Jeff Ladman. Choreographed by Bonnie Johnston. Stage manager Peter Van Dyke.