Explosive happiness

 

A still from Joss Whedon's "Much Ado About Nothing." Image:Elsa Guillet Chapuis

Anyone near a TV set in the 1970s or 1980s will remember the legendary Victor Kiam, the überperky president of Remington, brandishing an electric razor and exclaiming “I liked it so much, I bought the company!” While exposure to Much Ado About Nothing didn’t make me shell out for a manufacturing multinational, the play did have an equally galvanising effect on me: I liked it so much, I changed my name.

A year after getting my drama degree, I landed an acting job with an Equity card attached. I called Equity, who congratulated me and said that since there was already a David Phillips on their files, I would have to change my name. Oh.

My mother’s maiden name would make me David Moschkowitz: unpronounceable. My paternal grandmother’s name? I wasn’t going spend my working life intoning: “David Van Moppes, that’s V-A-N…” How about adding another first name: David Oliver? “Already taken.” David Adam? “Sorry.” This decision with lifelong repercussions was not only proving impossible, it had begun to feel bewilderingly random—until I remembered my favourite play.

I first experienced Much Ado About Nothing at school under the direction of Mr Stuart, our radical English teacher. I went to the first performance out of mild interest and was astonished. A starkly geometric, black-and-white set; Don John, who wilfully wrecks everyone’s happiness, leading a crew of malevolent body-builders; Beatrice and Benedick blithely riding bicycles. I was so electrified by what I saw—no, what I felt—that I forced my way into two of the other three packed performances.

Thirtyish years on, having seen numerous productions, often good and sometimes very bad, I know it’s one of Shakespeare’s finest, most underrated plays.

Forget the strained, arcane wordplay of Love’s Labour’s Lost, in the right hands the comedy in Much Ado is genuinely funny. Even the Globe’s dismal 2004 production was saved by Sarah Woodward’s glorious turn as pompous dimwit policeman Dogberry. The strength of the play’s humour needs reiterating since the chief opposition witness is Kenneth Branagh’s unfunny, wildly overpraised “Shakespeare as Heal’s catalogue” 1993 film version. (Michael Keaton and Ben Elton as a Shakespearean comedy double act, anyone? Thought not.)

But the laughter the play releases only sullies its reputation, since who takes comedy seriously? In the entire 83-year history of the Oscars, only six comedies have won the award for best film. Frankly, mounting a defence of Shakespeare’s comedies over the allegedly intellectually superior tragedies gains you nothing but disdain.

Yet such loftiness misses Shakespeare’s ability to dramatise explosive happiness, as in the scenes where Beatrice and Benedick are hoodwinked into recognising their love for one another. Not for nothing was part of the plot stolen over a century later for Ariodante, an opera by Handel, the composer with the greatest vocabulary for joy.

Audaciously, the comedy collides with the horrifying consequences of Don John’s plot. Exuberance freezes as young gun Claudio denounces his would-be wife Hero as a whore at their wedding. Lives are instantly ruined and the dramatic stakes rocket. His spirited point-scoring swept aside by depth of emotion, Benedick asks a Beatrice incandescent with grief, “Come, bid me do anything for thee.” To which she replies, “Kill Claudio.” And she means it.

That startling juxtaposition of pleasure and pain is what makes the play so striking. It’s the challenge now facing Eve Best, Charles Edwards and director Jeremy Herrin at the Globe, and Catherine Tate, David Tennant and director Josie Rourke at Wyndham’s Theatre in the west end.

I was too young to know if Mr Stuart’s production pulled it off. But something about it bit hard, enough to turn me into an actor—and not just me. In 1999, I went to see Michael Grandage’s revival of CP Taylor’s Good at the Donmar Warehouse. I stared at the actress playing opposite Charles Dance: her name was Jessica Turner. She was the Beatrice from my school’s production over 20 years before.

Sadly, I don’t remember the name of the boy who was her Benedick. I only hope that taking his character’s name—if sensibly switching to “dict” rather than “dick” —is enough of a compliment.