Babe, says the text.People are loving it. Champagne Glass Emoji, Celebratory Heart Emoji. Amy’s spirits lift.
Tommy returns. “People are loving it,” Amy tells him. She holds up her phone as proof but Tommy is already dimming the lights so the audience knows to return to their seats; he doesn’t answer.
Another text comes in from Greg:Met the producer. Amy drawsin her breath.Blake!Said he’s blown away. Amy exhales. Okay. Okay! Blake is happy. She can relax.
Amy retreats down to the back of the theater.
And now the second half, the scene in the outdoor church: Hero’s wedding day, when she will be accused falsely of infidelity and watch her dreams of a happy married life dissolve before her eyes. The wedding dress is stunning, made in a similar style to the dress Sam wore in the first act, with intricate beading that catches the light when she turns, and a veil that flows from the crown of her head and down her back. Amy’s heart hurts thinking about each age Sam has been. It feels like an actual pain, like somebody has driven something sharp into her chest cavity, and then twisted it, and she has to breathe deeply so that it can become bearable. She looks at this young woman onstage and thinks of Sam at age three, chubby legs running down the beach; six, seven, eight, missing teeth, Christmas mornings, birthday parties, science fair projects; Sam as Scout; as the little sister inMy Three Daughters;as a desultory regular Rhode Island high school student, occasionally breaking curfew or sneering at something her parents said but just as often making them laugh until they cried; Sam as a TikTok sensation, a member of a collab household (honestly, whatisthat? Amy is still trying to figure it out)—and now, Sam as Hero, resplendent, heartbroken, falling to the ground on her wedding day. Hero, who has done nothing wrong but to fall in love, and trust. Sam, the very same!
Thy slander hath gone through and through her heart.
Amy wants to tap the shoulder of the person in the last row and say,You see Hero up there? She’s mine. Greg and I made that kid. Isn’t she lovely? She’s holding her own with Gertie Sanger!
The slanderous plot is revealed; the lovers are reunited; Beatriceand Benedick agree to marry. All’s well that ends well, thinks Amy, though of course that’s a different play.
The curtain lowers, and the lights come up, and then the curtain rises again for bows. Somebody has handed identical bouquets of flowers to Sam and Gertie. Standing ovation. Curtain calls, Gertie shining like a constellation, Sam smiling so hard her face must be hurting. Amy can see Timmy now, in the second row, on the aisle, standing, his hands clasped together. She sees Gertie catch his eye, and she watches Timmy do a little half bow toward her.
Hell, thinks Amy, no wonder we’re still performing Shakespeare, still reading him and picking apart his dialogue and mining him for thoughts on societal expectations and gender roles. Because he still has relevance. Words can have relevance for a really long time, and it’s the people who take the risk, who put their words down, who get to enjoy that relevance.
You’re not exactly an expert on taking chances,Sam had told her. The words had stung because they were true. But did they have to be true forever?
The curtain lowers for the final time, and the audience begins to gather handbags and programs and cell phones and move toward the exit. Amy, swimming against the tide, goes to find her family. She’s looking for Greg when she feels a tap on her shoulder and she turns around: Timothy.
“It was amazing,” she says, and means it. “You did it.”
“Wedid it,” says Timothy. Are his eyes wet? His eyes are wet! “We did it.” He opens his arms and Amy opens hers, and he doesn’t have to say again that he sees her or appreciates her, and she doesn’t have to say that she understands his choices too, because it’s all right there.
“Much Ado” Is Everything
“Much Ado” Is Everything
Much Ado About Nothing, Empire Theatre, New Shoreham, RI
New York Times
By Charles C. Ritic
How much Shakespeare can we take in, at how many summer theaters? The answer, it seems, is as many productions as are offered, in as many guises.
Until last night, the most recent production ofMuch Ado About Nothingthis reviewer took in was the Public Theater’s delightful staging at the Delacorte on Central Park West in 2019—a pre-COVID summer that now, with the perspective that time’s passing affords, seems in many ways innocent and quaint.
Pandemics eventually come under control; the phoenix rises from the ashes; Shakespeare endures. These are lessons for our time. And so on a sultry summer’s night we ferried across Block Island Sound from Newport and settled into the well-air-conditioned Empire Theatre on Block Island, a tiny island off the coast of Rhode Island. Block Island is a New England oasis lacking both the provisions and the flashiness of a Nantucket or a Vineyard. I hadn’t been there since I was a boy, and was happy toreturn to immerse myself in a production of one of Shakespeare’s most popular comedies, with stage direction by Timothy Fleming, sets by Mason Miller, costumes by Shanita Grace, and starring the effervescent Gertie Sanger.
Much Adoremains popular for a reason. Like the best of Shakespeare, its themes are timeless—love and distrust, deception and cowardice and valor. The two couples at the center of the plot are Benedick and Beatrice and Claudio and Hero. The former couple profess not to love each other, until they do; the second profess only to love each other, until they don’t, then do again. Eventually, everybody gets married.
Miller’s sets transform this well-used stage (the theater has variously existed as an old-time roller rink, a movie theater, and a craft emporium) into the Messina of Shakespeare’s day, replete with rose gardens, a vine-covered villa, and iron balconies.
Summer theater historically attracts a high caliber of performer, but for a theater so small, and an island so relatively unsung, to attract the likes of Gertie Sanger is a rarity indeed. Ms. Sanger’s film roles have often depended on her ability to thrive in extreme close-ups—the batting of an eye, the slow release of a tear, the swinging of a lock of that famous strawberry-blond hair—but I’m happy to report that her talent holds up when the “camera” pulls back. Ms. Sanger, a classically trained actor, brings comedic grace and timing to the role of Beatrice, whose stage directions require her to be by turns impish and wisecracking, sharp-tongued, vulnerable: in short, to run the whole Shakespearian gamut.
Ms. Sanger’s talent is apparent not just in what she does but also in what she doesn’t do—she doesn’t steal the show from the other actors. Neil Hannan as Benedick and Geoffrey Hare as Claudio, each coming to this performance with an impressive stage résumé, also give strong performances, and the chemistry between Sanger and Hannan gives their will-they-or-won’t-they merriment (ofcoursethey will) a razor-sharp edge.
One cast member who deserves particular notice is Samantha Trevino, niece of the director, who stepped in to fill the role, reportedly at the last minute, when the actor originally cast left the production suddenly. Trevino enjoyed a much-lauded run ofTo Kill a Mockingbirdsome seven years ago, playing the part of Scout to her uncle’s Atticus Finch, before a stint in the Disney Channel Multiverse, and, most recently, the world of TikTok fame. As Hero, Ms. Trevino positively shines, and it’s almost impossible to believe the role wasn’t hers all along, and that she wasn’t born speaking Shakespeare. This is the sort of breakout performance the term “breakout performance” was created to describe.
One of the challenges in presenting a play like this in times like these is whether or how to reconcile the anachronisms of the era in which it was written with present-day norms and attitudes. How do we continue to enjoy plays penned more than 400 years ago when around us the world swirls, the planet melts, races and genders collide? Some directors decide to reinvent and reexamine. Mr. Fleming has chosen to give us the play as we imagine Shakespeare originally staged and wrote it, allowing the brilliance of the performances and sets, the preciseness of the stage direction, and the timelessness of the human condition to transport. My advice to you is to get thee to the island without delay to see this production.
When the show ended, theatergoers who failed to secure a room in one of the island’s bustling, sold-out hotels (this critic included) made the short walk to the ferry, a spring in their step. The night was glorious, the infusion of top-notch theater in an unexpected place invigorating. Incongruously, contemporary music reached the ears from Block Island’s National Hotel, its famous porch so full of revelers it seemed almost to sway of its own accord. And one cannot help but think that the Bard surely would have approved. Perhaps he even would have had a piece of advice to offer.
Strike up, pipers!
