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Comment MailTribune.com Writer Posted Mar. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM Updated Mar 4, 2015 at 1:05 PM Posted Mar. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM Updated Mar 4, 2015 at 1:05 PM » Social News The triumphant warriors of "Much Ado About Nothing," flush with victory and high spirits, are approaching the estate of Leonato, the governor of Messina, as the play opens. The apparent ease of their success in battle is cause for great joy. "How many gentlemen have you lost in this action?" Leonato (a pitch-perfect Jack Willis) asks the messenger sent by Don Pedro, Prince of Arragon and the company's commander. "But few of any sort, and none of name," says the messenger. These young men got to strut their derring-do and get off easy. And that is essentially what this sunny comedy has to say about war. Life, and battle, may not be a bed of roses, but in the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's new production of "Much Ado About Nothing," scenic designer Scott Bradley's abstract world is a stage full of roses, thousands of them hanging over the actors in great strings on an otherwise barren set. These suggest the largely feminine, celebratory, almost pastoral world presided over by Leonato. Giddy with victory, Don Pedro's (Cristofer Jean) jaunty company will party and lollygag — for at least a month, Don Pedro says — and it's in this ebullient atmosphere that the two romances that comprise the play's double plot will blossom. Benedick (Danforth Comins) and Beatrice (Christiana Clark) strive mightily to convince each other — and themselves — that the force passing between them is contempt, but it's clear to the audience that it is in fact love. Count Claudio (Carlo Albán) and Leonato's daughter, Hero (Leah Anderson), in contrast, are callow, two-dimensional young people who could almost swap plays with other generic young lovers in Shakespeare. Although the complex personalities of Beatrice and Benedick rivet us, Claudio and Hero provide the raw material for the theme of male jealousy in a plot driven by the machinations of the "plain-dealing villain" Don John, Don Pedro's evil brother. Except that now he's not. This time out, Don John (Regan Linton) is Don Pedro's wounded sister.  As the audience enters, Don John is a slumped, shadowy figure upstage in a wheelchair, her head covered with a garment, or maybe bandages. There is smoke, a distant rumble, perhaps the sound of battle. It's a somber effect, suited to a tragedy, but there is no such note in Shakespeare's play. Lileana Blain-Cruz, who directed, seems to be trying to suggest that play combines elements of tragedy and comedy, and that the Claudio-Hero courtship exists on the poetic scale of tragedies such as "Othello" or romances such as "The Winter's Tale." The main trouble with that theory is that these characters don't get killed. They get married. And we laugh a lot. And the bonds of love may be temporarily sundered by a villain, but love triumphs in the end. That the audience never doubts this outcome is one of the reasons why "Much Ado" is always popular. Comedy in Shakespeare is about restoring order to a disrupted social fabric, and that's what happens here when the linguistically challenged Dogberry (Rex Young) and his rustic mates hilariously uncover Don John's dastardly scheme. Blain-Cruz seems to be trying to answer the question: Why is Don John such an villain? And her answer seems to be because she was wounded in war and carries deep bitterness, maybe even something like PTSD. But looking for motivation in Shakespearean villains is a fool's errand. Great villains such as Richard III and Iago and lesser ones such as Edmund and Aaron the Moor and Don John don't have motivation in a modern, psychological sense. But Shakespeare wrote them carefully. And they are simply wicked. Don John is a stereotypical Elizabethan villain with no need for some grafted on "motivation." He (or she) would just "rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose," and that's that. Amid all this, Clark is sensational as Beatrice, bringing high energy, grace and spot-on comic timing to every scene she's in. And Comins is a forceful, boyish, likeable Benedick, even if he's a bit of a dufus. Young is a funny enough Dogberry, whose tongue should be locked up for assault on the English language. But for some reason he spends most of his time on stage riding a Segway, one of those goofy, little two-wheeled "personal vehicles." This is amusing visually but has the unfortunate effect of distracting us from the avalanche of malapropisms, which is the whole point. Lighting Designer Yi Zhao bathes the comic scenes that make up most of the play in gorgeous tones, then renders the apparent success of Don John's villainy in dull, jolting contrast. One scene features strobe lights, which are normally used on the stage to highlight a key moment, for no apparent reason. Composer and sound designer Chad Raines has created a rather abstract, often jangly score that at times competes or clashes with the action. The happy ending music is for some reason full of harsh ambiguity. Theater is a deal between playwright and director and audience to believe in an imaginary world with its own rules. There's nothing wrong with finding new resonances in a classic, but tacking on one's own agenda in an attempt at politically correct, post-modern "relevance" inevitably feels forced. Sure, the world then as now was filled with war and inequalities based on sex, race and class. It's still best to let Shakespeare be relevant on his own, like it or not. Reach freelance writer Bill Varble at [email protected] . MailTribune.com Writer Posted Mar. 1, 2015 at 12:01 AM Updated Mar 4, 2015 at 1:05 PM » Comment or view comments Reader Reaction » STAY INFORMED Email NewsLetter Sign Up Today Sign up for our newsletter and have the top headlines from your community delivered right to your inbox. Southern Oregon Directory Featured Businesses Loading... 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