Terms of Enchantment

By RICHARD CORLISS

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING by William Shakespeare

The house lights dim, wind chimes fill the night, and a lady appears at her cello to play a wistful air. Welcome to empyrean, where wit is a state of grace and the seraphim move in minute, minuet steps. No mortals need apply here, in this latest Royal Shakespeare Company triumph, which opened last week at Broadway's Gershwin Theater in repertory with Edmond Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. In the Much Ado realm, gods and goddesses play at love, duel with words, feign indifference and even death to gauge a suitor's passion-all to wile away a heavenly three hours.

When it was first performed at the end of the 16th century, Much Ado must have seemed as modern as Utopia. The main plot dated back to the Greeks: fair Hero is slandered, then allows her lover Claudio to think she has died. But the subplot, in which Hero's cousin Beatrice and Claudio's friend Benedick talk themselves out of and then into love, served up a sexual set-to whose rapier eloquence has inspired just about every British playwright of manners from Congreve to Coward and beyond. While Hero and Claudio played out their fustian collision of chivalry and jealousy at center court, Beatrice and Benedick stood on the sidelines, exchanged waspish badinage and transformed supporting roles into star turns. This time around, Sinead Cusack (who need no longer be known only as Mrs. Jeremy Irons) makes Beatrice every inch the lady of hide-pendent mind. Derek Jacobi's Benedick begins abubble with adolescent spirits, sighing and whinnying like a high school boy who won't admit that he is in love with the college queen. As flirtation ripens into passion, Jacobi's performance becomes calmer and more mature. This Benedick finally recognizes that first love is the most delicate and delicious rite of passage.

Much Ado succeeds not just because of its stars but because of the graceful way they blend into the grand design of an enchanting production. This is the fourth Much Ado to have been staged by the R.S.C. in 15 years; one would think that by now Director Terry Hands could do it in his dreams. And so he has. Borrowing moods and motifs from distinguished R.S.C. predecessors-the rigorous gaiety of a Peter Brook circus, the majesty of a Trevor Nunn midnight Mass-Hands has turned Shakespeare's most popular comedy into a dream play with music and dance. Each line of dialogue (not just "Speak low, if you speak love") sounds like a song cue from the loveliest libretto ever written. Each move seems choreographed to the playwright's verbal arias; the actors glide across Designer Ralph Koltai's gleaming Margard floor as if they were skating on a frozen ebony pond. Through the translucent bower at stage rear we can see the sky swirling madly with birds, fireflies and what looks like a red UFO as the carping lovers lead their fellows in a dashing waltz. The "dead" Hero stands behind a huge golden mandala; in front, monks move to the sweet melancholy of a torchlight dirge.

Hands has said that a director must be "prepared to trust Shakespeare." Here that means highlighting each word and gesture so that it plays for a modern audience. In Much Ado Hands digs deep into a bag that must be marked TRICKS THAT WORK. A courtly messenger declaims his prose in an Elmer Fudd accent; Benedick parades his manhood with the rakish tilt of his sword sheath; Constable Dogberry (Christopher Benjamin) casually flings a purse in the air, and his deputy Verges catches it in his hat. The gags, however earthbound, raise laughs hearty enough to fill Broadway's biggest house. But around the surefire comic bits, Hands continues to deploy the human opposites only art can reconcile. By the end of the evening a friar can dance with a wench, and the dead come back to life, and lovers banter until they fall into each other's arms at dawn.

-By Richard Corliss