Much Ado About Nothing (review)

The African-American Shakespeare Company's motto is "Envisioning the classics with color." More narrowly, this means staging plays "within the perspective and cultural dynamic of African-American culture." It's not only that the cast is always African-American, or that the target audience is mainly so; as its website and press material inform us, past productions have included a hip-hop Macbeth as well as a gospel Antigone. The "concept" that drives this company's productions is always rooted in contemporary black culture. For its 2005 production of Much Ado About Nothing, however, health issues forced the original director to withdraw at the last minute, which led the new director (and Founder), Sherri Young, to try—rather reluctantly and uneasily—something that was new to the company: "straight Shakespeare." In fact, Ms. Young went so far as to say to me in an interview that during the rehearsal process, she found herself "missing" what she self-deprecatingly referred to as "the trick" that defined the company's past productions. The resulting production thus inadvertently became an interesting study in what "straight"—as opposed to "concept"—Shakespeare might mean in this particular cultural context.

Truth be told, the cast was highly uneven, and thus gave the production a community-theatre feel. Yet this unevenness was precisely what made it interesting as a cultural performance. Beatrice and Benedick were performed by highly skilled actors with great flourish and aplomb; with the exception of Borachio, however, these roles were also the only ones performed with a visibly African-American touch. Indeed, Beatrice was performed by an émigré from Kenya (Christine Odera) who spoke the lines with the full force of her thick, resonant, and sinewy Kenyan accent. The remaining roles, played mostly by less talented (though sometimes quite experienced) actors, were defined as "straight" principally by means of a phony English accent. What was most surprising in all this was that for Ms. Young, the capacity to perform in this accent signaled how "seasoned" the actor was and thus also marked the degree of cultural legitimacy or bona fides that the actor possessed. She even found herself apologetically explaining Borachio's "street" speech as though it were something regrettable. The reason behind this surprising assessment is nonetheless understandable; as Ms. Young explained, despite early misgivings and fear of failure, she came to embrace the project as an opportunity for her company to leave the ghetto temporarily, as it were, and aspire to the status of a color-less classical repertory company. Still, the dynamic between English straightness and a more colorful playfulness defined the production in ways that resisted, happily, the unusual controls that the company placed on itself for this play.

The opening scene set this dynamic in motion with Leonato running through some exposition in what could charitably be called a feeble English accent (which wasn't at all helped by the fact that Leonato was played by a youngish man as a geriatric with all the requisite bent-over trembling and similar trappings). Then suddenly, into this dispiriting soundscape, came a rich, vibrant voice that was as alive as Leonato's was dead: the voice of Christine Odera's Beatrice. This voice was clearly marked as that of an immigrant, but was no more foreign than the surrounding British accents; in fact, in the opening moments, and continuing throughout the show, this particular foreignness came across as authentic—not merely in being so literally African-American, but in belonging so clearly to the actor—while the British voices rang hollow. The voice also had the effect of setting off Beatrice the character as exceptional, and even...