'Much Ado About Nothing' needs little introduction, and so I'll jump straight into my interpretation of it. I saw it as a story of battles and dances. The battles take the form of actual war and, more prominently, verbal jousting. Given this is Shakespeare, the play ends in the order and structure of marriage. However, before getting there what’s most at stake is the vulnerability of being in love. All of this, to me, invoked the world of a 1950s America that Brits have taken in through media such as 'Grease', where getting a date to the prom is the source of much angst and anxiety.
The 50s was a decade with the US marriage rate at an all-time high and on average younger than ever before, with the Cold War a big part of life. The dominant theme was that marriage was the be-all-and-end-all for women, with MRS degrees, and American propaganda promoting the nuclear family as a reason the country was superior to the Soviet Communists.
On top of this, from a design POV it’s a stunning period of geometric shapes, bright colours, and the birth of consumerism.
So, I felt it could live, breath and talk here and play out with energy, innocence and vibrancy, whilst being slightly heightened. This setting for me released the text.
Set:
I split the script into 8/9 locations, and then grouped them into the need for the staging to be large, intimate, or somewhere in-between. For large, I invoked nostalgia of the 1950s – going down the abstract route and designing a postcard of that location.
These were the street/the party hall/the diner/the church that could be flown in and out. The in-betweens would take place in front of these, but with the actors still further downstage and separated with lighting. The intimate scenes would take place in a smaller area towards the front of the stage, with just a black backdrop. All of them would feature foreground elements that would be moved in/out/around by the chorus.
Lighting:
The lighting also fell into the same categories as the set. 'Large' lit the entire stage, with colour and chutzpah. Two of those scenes had elements of the set specifically take lighting: the hall, which had a mirror ball to create a party atmosphere by throwing moving lights across the stage and auditorium, and the background flat of the church, which was backlight and created with a material so that the stainglass window depicted could cast colourful light across the stage.
'Intimate' were separated from the black backdrop with backlighting and spots but still often as stylised and vibrant, such as with the pink-tinged Hero’s bedroom.
Sound:
The show was heavily scored by the music of Elvis Presley to fit both the setting but also the themes I laid out earlier. A ‘Little Less Conversation a Little More Action Please’ is a key theme of the play, ie don’t let words get in the way of feeling, whether that’s believing someone else’s about your soon-to-be wife or allowing them to form a shield to stop yourself loving.
There was mix of instrumental and lyrics so that if any the latter become too specific, given he spoke from a male perspective, then we could invoke the feelings around the themes of the songs without the lines accompanying them. Sometimes these songs became diegetic sound, meaning they emanated from world of the play such as through a jukebox or guitar as opposed to just being soundtrack.