Stolen Shakespeare Guild is Much Ado about something great
by Punch Shaw, Special to the Star-Telegram
FORT WORTH — In our efforts to show Shakespeare’s works the respect they deserve, we may sometimes be guilty of the overstating the case.
We tend to isolate his plays in their own festivals, update them with garishly elaborate productions and place them on a pedestal so they might look down their noses at lesser works.
So thank goodness for the Stolen Shakespeare Guild and its presentations of the Bard’s works that remind us as that these are just great, entertaining plays that stand on their own without the aid of an adoring context, star actors or grandiose production values.
All it takes to do Shakespeare well is a capable director and cast who love and understand the texts, as is the case with the company’s current production of Much Ado About Nothing at the Sanders Theatre in the Fort Worth Community Arts Center.
This romantic comedy, which makes merry with parallel plot lines about love’s labors getting twisted by confusion, is well-played by a sprawling cast whose members all seem to know what is really going on (not something that can always be taken for granted with Shakespeare). The direction, credited to Jason Morgan with Lauren Morgan, deserves kudos for maintaining a brisk pace, making good use of the minimal set and props, and keeping the many players singing in the same key.
The standout performance in this production is found in a surprising place. Allen Walker, as Leonato (the father of Hero, one of the female love interests) makes a minor role major by being casual and offhanded when appropriate, but also finding fire and thunder when it is needed.
Walker is a key part of a moment in the second act, where this production peaks. Until this point, all has been sweetness and light. But when Hero (Samantha Chancellor) is falsely accused of betraying her fiance, things take a darker turn. And Walker, Chancellor and J King (the very perceptive Friar Francis) join forces to make the scene absolutely riveting.
You will walk out of the theatre in the glow of having just spent a couple of hours with Shakespeare’s wonderful poetry and the broad range of human emotions he lays bare in those lines. And, when it comes to theater, it just doesn’t get any better than that.
Much Ado About Nothing performs in the Sanders Theatre at the Fort Worth Community Arts Center through February 21st. Tickets on sale now through Theatre Mania (866-811-4111), by going to the Stolen Shakespeare Guild website or at the Box Office starting one hour before any performance.
Next week, the Stolen Shakespeare Guild opens its 2010 season with 
Ready Teddy took home two Golden Drovers last night at the awards presentation for the Trail Dance Film Festival, held over the weekend in Duncan, Oklahoma. Writer, Producer, Director Jerod Costa’s bloody rock-n-roll opus took home a statue for Best Dark Comedy. Kate Cassity won a trophy for her poster design for the film.
In the film, I play a Liverpudlian lunatic named Paul whose crew — John, George and Ringo — has kidnapped the King of Rock-N-Roll seeking to extract the secret of That-Which-All-Men-Desire. Caught in a trap and can’t walk out, will our hero get all shook up? That’ll be the day! Not for the squeamish, Ready Teddy is a tale of blood, guts and peanut-butter-banana cuisine.
Mesquite Community Theatre
Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defense have not arrested the plow, the shuttle, or the ship; the ax has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well as the iron and coal as of our precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege, and the battlefield, and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom. No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.
It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently, and gratefully acknowledged, as with one heart and one voice, by the whole American people. I do therefore invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a day of thanksgiving and praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the imposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the divine purpose, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity, and union.
Brad Stephens 