Old Play on Broadway

Much Ado About Nothing (by William Shakespeare) has a contemptible hero, a motiveless villain, a tediously improbable main plot. Happily, what academics term the subplot--the prickly-pear romance of Benedick and Beatrice--is one of the most delightful things in all Shakespeare. And it can never have seemed more a delight than when John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton are swapping insults and moving blindfolded toward the altar.

In creating his determinedly unromantic lovers, Shakespeare as a comedy writer traded sighs for banter, nightingales for mockingbirds, antic humor for elegant wit. Benedick's first sniffy words to Beatrice--"What, my dear Lady Disdain--are you yet alive?"--could drop straight out of Congreve. As for their wearing their hearts on their fingernails, it is a truism that the pair of them--he all scorn for marriage, she all scorn for men--are so antagonistic for being so much alike. Fortunately, the dullards around them dream up one bright idea: they contrive that an eavesdropping Benedick shall hear that Beatrice absolutely dotes on him, that an ear-cocked Beatrice shall learn that Benedick is half dead for love of her.

As they rise to the bait, Actor Gielgud and Actress Leighton also rise to the top of their bents. At sparring they are perfectly matched, at witty detail brilliantly mated. If added tribute goes to Actress Leighton, it is for a certain marvelously sustained manner: she is all hoity-toity airiness and verve. Though the rest of the production, barring George Rose's lively Dogberry, is much of a piece with the rest of the play, both are well worth putting up with for the sake of the stars.

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