Much Ado About Nothing with the Boise Bard Players

Or: Lapwing and Grouse

A free-wheeling, off-and-about the walls Much Ado awaits the audience of the Boise Bard Players. Only an hour long the production flows through and fills the space around an audience. It’s minimal, its chaotic but the cast knocks joke after joke into a home run, elicit confidences from the audience among the ruins of the fourth wall, all whilst putting the Shakespearean language through its paces and finding the anchoring roots the play while the gales of laughter toss the branches above.

A particularly winning performance in this line of zany gravity is Tris Berg as Leonato (benevolent elder) and Borachio (small time purveyor of villainy and sleaze). Though her two parts glide along on rails of good humored mischief and cringing with a healthy dose of lewd joy (respectively), Berg also grounds her characters beyond mere comedy when the stakes are high. When Leonardo challenges Don Pedro (Dakotah Brown) and Claudio (Logan Leavitt) in the space Berg brings a sharp and balanced danger. Though the text makes light of the fact, Berg is ready to throw down and die for the honor of their child. Similarly when Borachio is brought to justice (not by a Dogberry, whose been cut for time) there is heartfelt remorse for a sleaze peddling trick that has gone so far.

And what of our Beatrice (Tiara Thompson) and Benedick (Chris Canfield)? Both are lively, quick tongued beautifully expressive. At one point her uncle describes Beatrice as a lapwing  darting “close to the ground to hear our conference.” Thompson suits action to word, both in this particular scene, (scuttling around the tables at a crouch, popping up in incredulous effrontedness) and throughout the play. Her Beatrice flys at unexpected angles, quirkily cocking her head, turning on heel, and slyly landing each verbal barb with delightful smugness. This flash is shown as essential to Beatrice, even in her moments of vulnerability or soaring rage. Her character, like her language, flies beautifully in Thompson’s hands.

To continue the ornithological metaphor, if Thompson’s Beatrice is a lapwing, Canfield’s Benedick is a sage grouse: impressively plumed, smartly strutting, and carrying expansive surprises (though, to be clear, these are more charming then a pair of air sacs). Canfield, well known and highly regarded for his skills at verse, commands his language, slowly drawing realizations, or crisply spiking jokes home, leaning into his audience to share Benedick’s philosophies, even as the character rewrites them. Also noted beneath his bravado is a true desire to do good. After the disastrous wedding, we see a split second of his instinct to fall in and follow his comrades from the church, but overthrows it to help the distraught Hero (Aria Hroma, doubling as the sullen, bro-y Don Jon). Telling, in this cut, it is Benedick, not the friendly neighborhood Friar, who proposes the plan for saving the bride from slander and despair.

Both are egged on by Don Pedro, who takes delight and great success at teasing both the lovers (Brown too changes cuttlefish quick through the show, sweeping from sexy to silly to deathly serious to shattered.) Like billiard balls about the baize, the veteran cast sparks off each other in brilliant flashes of wit, and set each other spinning in directions. But still, the play, the story remains as gripping as it has for 450 years, like an ancient gem showing off new facets in this new setting. A particularly poignant moment is a hug shared by Beatrice and Benedick in the aftermath of the horrible wedding: uncharged by tension, the once adversaries, not quite yet allies, each fold into the other a simple embrace of comfort. Comfort found in the arms of someone who, in spite of all things, understands them more than anyone else in the world.