The Drilling Company's Shakespeare in the Parking Lot ensemble opens the third season of Shakespeare performances in Bryant Park with MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING set in the Post World War I Suffragette movement. This free production, directed by Hamilton Clancy, is one of three plays that is included in Bryant Park Presents Shakespeare and is offered from May 19 to June 4 on the Upper Terrace of Bryant Park, behind the New York Public Library. Scroll down for a sneak peek at the stars in costume!
"Much Ado About Nothing" is a comedy about courtships: a hasty one that nearly goes wrong and a reluctant one that leads to success. The reluctant wooers are the delightful Beatrice and Benedick, who are onstage through most of the play. The hasty wooers are Hero, Beatrice's cousin, and Claudio, Benedick's comrade in arms. In the original play, the men have returned from a military campaign in Sicily with hearts bent on marriage. Here they are World War I vets. The women are Suffragettes and their zeal for new women's roles introduces a new level of complexity to the witty, agile, sometimes insulting repartee between the lovers that is the play's trademark. The plot centers on the high trickery it takes to bring Beatrice and Benedick together and the bumbling of Dogberry and Verges, who bring villainy to light before it separates Hero and Claudio.
Director
Hamilton Clancy explains, "We are setting it in the Suffragette Movement because we are interested in interpreting Beatrice as an original fighter for women's rights. In a time when we may elect a female President, it seems right for this. The language and conflict of the characters in 'Much Ado' suggests a lot of the values and mores of the early 20th Century. The soldiers returning from World War I were eager to settle down and society was preparing for the emergence of powerful women. It's a natural fit."
Anwen Darcy (who stole the show last year as a female Mercutio in "Romeo and Juliet" in Bryant Park) plays Beatrice opposite
McKey Carpenter's Benedick.
Andrew Gombas plays Claudio and Mary Linnihan plays Hero. Drew Valins plays Dogberry,
James Davies plays Leonato and
Bill Green plays the Friar. The cast (still in formation as of this writing) also includes Jarrod Bay, Gracie Winchester,
Michael Bernstein and Eric Pateriani. Set design is by Jennifer Varbalow and Sound design is by Anna Grossman.
Hamilton Clancy (Director) is Artistic Director of The Drilling Company and the most frequent director of Shakespeare in the Parking Lot, for whom he has staged 17 Shakespeare productions to-date. He has also acted there as Henry V, Julius Caesar, Petruchio and Benedick, among others. He played Tor, a Norwegian mobster, in the Drilling Company's long-running comedy, "The Norwegians" and appears routinely on TV's "Orange is the New Black" as C.O. Kowalski.
The Drilling Company is producing three other outdoor Shakespeare events in Bryant Park this year: A celebration of Shakespeare's 452nd Birthday and the 400th Anniversary of his death (April 22), a Steampunk version of "As You Like It" with music by
Natalie Smith (July 21 to 23), and "Measure for Measure" (September 1 to 18), interpreted as a battle of the sexes in the South.
For info on upcoming Drilling Company productions, call 212-873-9050 or visit
www.shakespeareintheparkinglot.com and
www.drillingcompany.org.
Pictured: Anwen Darcy as Beatrice and McKey Carpenter as Benedick. Photos by Remy.
