We had planned to take in Much Ado About Nothing, The Company of Fools' latest Torchlight Shakespeare Production, on Friday night but lost heart as the rain dripped on steadily through suppertime. I spent the evening hunched over the computer watching a twenty-year-old Ontario Stratford Festival production of As You Like It, and envisioning elder daughter taking in the play at The Globe Theatre, occasionally pausing to scan London web cams to help my imaginings.
When elder daughter returned home yesterday afternoon from a week on a youth group "pilgrimage" to Iona (during which she avoided prayer at every opportunity), we learned that she had missed the play when the group was trapped by delays in the Underground coming from the airport. Instead, they spent three hours tramping around Eastcheap and Tower Hill, although nobody seemed to know exactly what it was they were looking at (aside from many unmistakable drunks).
So, as elder daughter set up camp to make up for a week away from the internet, the Resident Fan Boy, younger daughter and I set off for Strathcona Park. Younger daughter and I have but a week remaining before we flee to Victoria, so we felt delaying seeing M.A.A.N. might result in missing it altogether.
And that would have been a pity. The four or five regular readers of this blog may recall that we saw the Company of Fools' version of
Romeo and Juliet last summer. That had been a mild summer day by Ottawa standards, rather like stepping into a warm tub. This particular evening was like a summer's evening in Victoria, although a tad more buggy. I got the folding chair, while the Resident Fan Boy and younger daughter settled on a duvet, and soon I was swaddling myself in my fleece jacket against the chill. Trust me, this was the first time I'd ever had to do so on a July evening in Ottawa.
Much Ado About Nothing has never been my favourite Shakespearean play, mainly because I usually spend a good chunk of the time wanting to throttle Claudio for being such a self-righteous git, and wondering why Hero still takes him on after his appalling treatment of her. I was relieved of such unpleasant sentiments this time, because the Company of Fools, for reasons of brevity, soul, and wit, have a rather cartoonish take on Shakespeare and Claudio, as played by AL Connors, is a big handsome empty-headed twit, and Hero, as played by Emmanuelle Zeesman, is a tiny gorgeous empty-head twit. Fine by me, much more palatable. (And a good thing, as I seemed to be swallowing rather a lot of gnats.)
Now here, I should mention that AL (yes he capitalizes it that way) Connors also played Margaret the maid. And about five other people. Emmanuelle Zeesman also played Hero's father Leonato. And the prince Don Pedro, among others. Margo MacDonald, a co-founder of the Company, was our Beatrice, and also the arch-villain Don John (who apparently possessed the ability to give people chills and never failed to exit without a diabolical laugh). Oh yes, she played other people too. Scott Florence, our Benedict with muddy knees (due, no doubt, to the raininess of the previous evenings) also played three or four other characters. Since M.A.A.N. often requires more than four of the characters on stage at a given time, use was made of several mannikins with flower-pot heads, as you may see from the publicity shot taken by Andrew Alexander who attended the rainy July 3rd performance that we, wusses that we are, missed. Whenever a mannikin's performance was taken over by a flesh-and-blood actor, the latter would don the hat and apron. It took about five minutes to get used to this, and then the story and performances took over. In fact, when the actors took their bows, it was a tribute to their efforts that I was startled to count only four actors.
The evening, as I've mentioned, was cool and lovely. (Native Ottawans would hate it.) At one point the crowd was startled by the sudden emergence of a black squirrel from the gathered mass of bodies seated on the ground. Claudio stared dumbstruck for a moment, then continued his line with a shrug and a grin. Younger daughter loved the physical comedy, and gazed delightedly as a rabbit hopped leisurely along the pathway, the one passerby that didn't stop to watch the show. Familiarity doesn't breed contempt in younger daughter and she was delighted to recognize the actors, particularly Margo MacDonald and Scott Florence, who were the pair of ice-cream-loving clowns in last winter's production of
A Midwinter Dream's Tale.
After the show, they passed the hat, and we folded things up and strolled home under a mackerel sky, another rare thing in Ottawa. To the east, a nearly full moon hung over the Rideau River, looking exactly like the moon elder daughter had photographed over the Tower of London only the evening before.
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