Mauckingbird Theatre Company, the local ensemble known for producing thought-provoking LGBT plays, is back in action with another gay interpretation of a William Shakespeare classic. This time, the company is tackling the timeless comedy “Much Ado About Nothing” through Aug. 26.
Under the gay lens of Mauckingbird, “Nothing” contrasts the romantic entanglements of the young and spontaneous Claudio and Hero (Griffin Back and Cameron Slusser) with the bantering rivalry of older couple Beatrice and Benedick (Sean Thompson and Matt Tallman), exploring issues of marriage, jealousy and love through the eyes of gay men.
Thompson, who also starred in the Mauckingbird/Shakespeare production “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” said there are challenges in transforming Shakespeare into a gay story.
“The challenges come with changing the sexes of all the female characters and changing the two older male characters to females, and how to get around that to tell the story clearly enough through that gay lens,” he said. “The characters that are normally female are obviously gay men. But we found that there are two sets of men in this world: There are the soldiers, which are masculine and strong, and what we have been calling the fairer set of males, that are softer, more emotional and not as strong physically. So instead of a battle of the sexes, it’s become a battle of those who are masculine and those who are not masculine.”
Mauckingbird’s “Nothing,” finds Claudio and Benedick coming home from battle while the latter resumes an ongoing rivalry with Beatrice, and Claudio discovers feelings for Hero. When friends and foes begin to gossip, Benedick and Beatrice are drawn together while Claudio and Hero are bitterly torn apart. “It’s always exciting to see how new the story feels when told from a queer point of view,” Mauckingbird artistic director Peter Reynolds said. “In Shakespeare’s play, Hero is a young woman shamed in a powerful scene by her father, Leonato. In our version, it was the mother-gay son encounter that really moved the whole cast. Things were illuminated in a different way — it became more emotional.”
“Normally in any production, Claudio is the superstar soldier,” Thompson said. “He’s young and, in this production, he’s particularly young. You have him falling in love with a very young hero, a young gay boy as opposed to the older Benedick and Beatrice who have been around the block and know that story already. You get to see the older couple railing against being together while the younger couple can’t wait to be together.”
Slusser, who plays Hero, said the gay interpretation of the story changes the nuances of Shakespeare’s humor.
“Having gay characters, I don’t know if it creates jokes that weren’t already there, but it makes them more apparent,” the actor said. “With Shakespeare, there’s a lot of body humor to begin with, but when you make it gay, there are much more jokes about body parts that are much more clear.”
Thompson added that changing the main characters allowed the cast to re-imagine the conflicts between Benedick and Beatrice as well as Claudio and Hero.
“In this production we decided they were together at one point in time and Benedick kind of talked Beatrice off thoughtlessly and fought in the war,” Thompson said. “So the play discovers them when Benedick returns from the war. So Beatrice is wondering if they are going to go back to what they were or if Benedick is still deciding to toss him off. And Benedick completely rallies against any long-term commitment. [Claudio and Hero] have this perfect little relationship, young puppy love, and Hero gets accused of being unfaithful to Claudio. Hero is supposed to be pure and innocent, and he’s accused of being promiscuous. That’s where the conflict comes in.”
Slusser said that while some might see the older couple in an unfavorable light, they have the best of intentions.
“I think Beatrice and Benedick have large egos and intellectual egos as well,” he noted. “So they think they know what is right, how the world works and how love works. I don’t want to call them spiteful, but they think they know more about the world. But that kind of blinds them to the love they have for each other.”
With a story focusing on gay couples and marriage, audiences might expect “Nothing” to overflow with sentiments aimed at the struggle for marriage equality in the United States. But Thompson said the world these characters live in isn’t anything like the actual world.
“It’s a world we’ve not yet seen. It’s a world where gay men marry everywhere and women can rule over this particular land. There’s no clear time period. It’s just a world we’ve not yet seen. The norm in this world is to be happy and married. Coming from playing Beatrice, all I want is for my younger cousin, Hero, to be happy, uncomplicated and marry the love of his life. So it’s not like this world, where an older gay couple knows that strain of being together in any decade before right now.”
Even though Mauckingbird’s take on “Much Ado About Nothing” might not present itself as overtly political, the message in this comedy still can speak to people on the issue of marriage equality.
“That’s what the play is about: two men falling in love,” Slusser said. “[Claudio and Hero] are the typical young-love-at-first-sight type of thing. That’s how the relationship plays out. To me, the story does not feel different than if it were a man or woman. It feels very similar. What I’m pulling away from the story is love is love. In our time, gay marriage is debated and banned. This love is the same as if it were a man and a woman. Just because it’s two men, it doesn’t make it any different. The love that connects them is still the same.”
“I hope that audiences take away the fact that gay people are just as normal as anybody else and deserving of normalcy in their romantic relationships,” Thompson added. “What Mauckingbird is doing in this production is showing gay men and their story. There is no railing against the current dilemma of gay marriage. It’s just showing a world where this is all OK and why can’t our world be the same.”
“Much Ado About Nothing” runs Aug. 10-26 at the Off Broad Street Theater at First Baptist Church, 1636 Sansom St. For more information or tickets, call 215-923-8909 or visit www.mauckingbird.org.