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PROVINCETOWN GUIDE
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| DIRECTORY |
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Provincetown :: Thursday, September 2nd 2010
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Jack Matheson and Amanda Fuller as Benedick and Leonata. |
Much Ado About Something
Shakespeare on the Cape Performs
By Kahrin Deines
July 13th, 2007
Much ado is being made this summer on Tuesdays at the Provincetown Theater, but it’s not about nothing. Shakespeare on the Cape – that ambitious young theater company that has built a name for itself in record short time – is back for another summer season and it is giving the bard’s comedy Much Ado About Nothing masterful play.
| Directed by Elisa Carlson, SOTC’s version of this famously wit rich play, is a stand out with the kind of superb acting, as well as playful and innovative presentation, for which this theater company has become well known. |
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Directed by Elisa Carlson, SOTC’s version of this famously wit rich play, is a stand out with the kind of superb acting, as well as playful and innovative presentation, for which this theater company has become well known.
Elizabeth Stahlmann, a new addition to the company, and Elliot Eustis play Hero and Claudio, the easy lovebirds whose union is challenged by outside plotting, with ringing clarity. Meanwhile, Whitney Hudson and Jack Matheson, both also new this year, star as their foils in the play, Beatrice and Benedick, and truly charm as these unwilling lovers. They do a wonderful job with the fast clip of their characters’ verbal sparring, even though both are doing double duty with other roles, and their on-the-mark sense of how to enunciate and emphasize the wit’s phrasing is a big part of what makes the story’s themes sing in this production.
A number of SOTC veterans are also in the cast. Ben Griessmeyer, who won the Cape Cod Times “Best Actor Award” for 2007, stars as both Don John, the story’s villain, and as a happy go lucky, hilarious Verges. Tessa K. Bry is also back as the wise Balthasar and performs a number of lovely ballads in her role. And the theater company’s artistic directors, Eustis and Eric Powell Holm, are on stage as well as Claudio and Don Pedro, respectively. Two other new actors have also joined the company this year as well – Amanda Fuller, as a powerful and gentle Leonata, a female version of Shakespeare’s Leonid, and Grant Heuke, as both Hero’s dissipated lady in waiting, Margaret, and as the Friar.
As the story unfolds, and the characters’ schemes play out, the cast carries the mood easily from the somber matters of heartbreak, betrayal and rage to new love, forgiveness, and a happy ending.
As Benedick says to Beatrice at one point in their wordy flirtations, “thou hast frighted the word out of his right sense, so forcible is thy wit.” Much of the play’s plot rides on the same kind of headstrong precipitate behavior. But rather than in words, in action, as the characters run too quick to judgment and too little to examination of what they witness or overhear. Hence, there is much ado, but all ends well in the garden after all. And in the hands of Shakespeare on the Cape, the audience gets to enjoy both the light and merry heart of the play, along with its lessons.
Shakespeare on the Cape is performing Much Ado About Nothing at the Provincetown Theater on Tuesdays at 7:30 p.m. until August 28. The Provincetown Theater is located at 238 Bradford Street. To find out more or buy tickets, call 508.487.9793 or go to www.shakespeareonthecape.org or www.newprovincetownplayers.org.
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