In Bard on the Beach's Much Ado About Nothing, romantic entanglements abound at a vineyard house party

Johnna Wright directs the idyllic, Mediterranean-set Shakespeare play that revolves around two vastly different couples

By emily lyth

Johnna Wright. Photo by David Cooper

Jennifer Lines (left) as Beatrice and Sheldon Elter as Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Tim Matheson

Bard on the Beach presents Much Ado About Nothing on the BMO Mainstage in Vanier Park to September 20

BRITISH-AMERICAN POET W.H. Auden once wrote that Much Ado About Nothing’s Beatrice and Benedick are the Shakespeare characters “we’d most like to sit next to at dinner.”

It’s easy enough to pinpoint why that might be. Beatrice is feisty, cynical, and quick on her feet, characteristics that disrupted 16th-century gender norms. The debonair lord Benedick, meanwhile, mirrors many of those traits himself, making the quarrelling lovers a well-matched pair. And though both swear off marriage at the start of the play, they’re eventually tricked into admitting their feelings for one another by the conniving nobleman Don Pedro.

Beatrice and Benedick’s banter contributes greatly to the comedic appeal of Much Ado About Nothing. The play is appearing at Bard on the Beach’s BMO Mainstage until September 20—and director Johnna Wright is maintaining the lovers’ down-to-earth energy and dinner-table appeal.

“They’re so witty and clever and just fun to be around,” she tells Stir. “So I think part of what sets this one apart, really, is that there are a lot of people like that in the play. There are a lot of characters that are fundamentally kind and want the best. Of course, you have your spoilers, you have your bad guys, because otherwise we couldn’t have conflict. But I think there are a lot of people to like in this play, and to care about.”

Beatrice and Benedick are one of two couples at the centre of Much Ado About Nothing. Their story is interwoven with that of another pair, young lovers Hero and Claudio, whose marriage is nearly sabotaged when Don Pedro’s half-brother, Don John, attempts to trick Claudio into thinking Hero is unfaithful. That sort of serious deception runs rampant throughout the play, intermixed with more lighthearted pranks, as two very different romantic entanglements develop.

“Something about a Mediterranean vineyard is, to me, especially idyllic.”

“We have our younger couple who are very innocent, and this is their first love,” Wright explains. “All kinds of terrible mistakes are made, really, because of that youth and that lack of judgment that comes with experience, so that has its challenges. And then for our more mature couple, they’re on the other end of that scale: a little bit jaded by whatever life has thrown at them so far. So they have to kind of get past that. They both have their different obstacles to happiness, but in a way, they contrast each other.”

Wright is a Bard on the Beach veteran who has directed The Merry Wives of Windsor twice, and most recently codirected All’s Well That Ends Well with Rohit Chokhani. The latter production was set in India in 1946, just before the end of the British colonial rule, allowing for explorations of culture, race, and privilege beyond the contents of Shakespeare’s original story.

Though Wright has often transported the Bard’s works to different times and places, she decided to keep her take on Much Ado About Nothing relatively true to the original. It’s still set in the Italian port city of Messina—but all the drama will go down within the context of a lively Mediterranean house party.

Set designer Pam Johnson decided to place the home in a vineyard where folks are bustling about doing their jobs, to emphasize the fact that the play is centred around a middle-class family rather than aristocrats.

“Something about a Mediterranean vineyard is, to me, especially idyllic,” Wright says. “So it meant that we could have just this really beautiful setting with the stone terrace out behind the house where everybody relaxes in the summertime. And there’s the feeling of activity and work happening as well.”

Wright’s ties to Bard on the Beach run deep: she played Titania in A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the fest’s inaugural edition in 1990. Mara Gottler was the costume designer for that production, and in a cool full-circle moment, she has also created the costumes for Much Ado About Nothing.

“We kind of started it up with nothing, and it’s amazing how it’s grown, that’s for sure,” Wright reflects of the fest’s beginnings. She recalls with a laugh how they borrowed chairs from the Vancouver School Board for audience members to sit on; nowadays, some 90,000 people flock to Vanier Park every summer to watch the company’s productions.

Wright notes that there is a deep dedication to, understanding of, and appreciation for Shakespeare that echoes throughout all the cast and crew members every year. All that commitment and enthusiasm made it an enjoyable process for her to find new depth in the script of Much Ado About Nothing, which features additional text by Erin Shields for its Bard on the Beach run.

“This time when I read it, I noticed how the people changed when they knew that they were loved, or when they found out that somebody saw something in them,” the director says of Beatrice, Benedick, Claudio, and Hero. “In many of these cases, they rise to that, and they want to be better because somebody has seen something in them—or at least that’s how it struck me this time. So I think that that’s a message I really like: the idea that we can be better. Sometimes being loved makes us want to be better.”  

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