STAGE REVIEW : La Jolla’s ‘Much Ado’ Romps in Tune With Today’s World

LA JOLLA —  Never underestimate Des McAnuff’s ability to seize an opportunity.

Here we are, days away from a presidential election and, presto, he delivers a contemporary “Much Ado About Nothing” that reminds us that those ills we have are not too different from the ones that plagued Elizabethan England.

To put it this way is to oversimplify the issue, but what’s delightful about the Shakespearean romp that opened Sunday in the Mandell Weiss Theatre of the La Jolla Playhouse is how much unencumbered fun the script provides, while its updated setting makes its own independent and ironic points.

Not only do we have in Monique Fowler’s and Mark Harelik’s Beatrice and Benedick an attractive, fast-talking pair of witty sparrers who keep the production’s pressure up, but designers Robert Brill (sets), Chris Parry (lights) and David C. Woolard (costumes) have given them a stunning upscale context in which to cavort.

Leonato’s magnificent Art Deco mansion looks like a private wing of the Arizona Biltmore, complete with putting green, an abundance of cellular phones, VCRs and caterers for every occasion.

The yellow ribbons that bedeck the railings herald the arrival of Don Pedro’s conquering armies in a dazzling display of military rectitude. But, except for changing ducats to dollars, McAnuff largely avoids tampering with the text.

His most salient zingers--are you ready for this?--are a martial rendition of “Hey Nonny, Nonny” by stodgy military brass (hilarious and creepy), and a masked ball celebrating Don Pedro’s victories in which every nonpartisan mask bears a familiar likeness, from Bush and Quayle and Jimmy Carter to Woody Allen and Mike Tyson.

But McAnuff never sacrifices the play’s natural flow to forced effect. By making his gags mostly visual, they stay out of the way of the action. Much of the fastidious plotting by Don John (a brooding Michael Cerveris) and his dirty-tricks boys, Borachio (Scott Ridley) and Conrade (David Fenner), is done over cellular phones or while the guys are lifting weights. Beatrice overhears of Benedick’s love for her from Ursula (Tonia Rowe) and Hero (Kellie Waymire) out for their morning jog.

These actors give new meaning to earning one’s keep by the sweat of one’s brow. Yet for all of “Much Ado’s” frequently unpersuasive tale of love won, foiled, traduced and recovered, the pace at La Jolla is as crisp as the military uniforms and the cast just as sharp.

Attention flags only briefly in the second half, filled as it is with lengthy plotting and counterplotting. But the stage lights up whenever Harelik or Monique Fowler set foot on or around it, as they eavesdrop behind the shrubbery, puncture the air with verbal volleys or succumb to sheepish loopiness when tricked into admitting their love for one another.

They seem divinely suited. And in the subtext, David Brisbin and Clement Fowler are differently but just as deliciously matched. Their Dogberry and Verges, respectively, plow roughshod through the English language, as they benevolently browbeat the hopelessly out-of-shape members of their ragtag police.

Less flashy but significant to the total picture are Clarence Felder’s corporate Leonato (a Ross Perot without the same devotion to his children) and Rodney Scott Hudson’s kindly and naive Don Pedro.

Laura Innes gets in some healthy licks as Hero’s sharp-tongued maid Margaret, and a running gag between Benedick and a Boy Scout (Ross Wachsman) is wordless by-play Shakespeare never dreamed up, but that adds spice to the already tangy merriment.

Reservations? A couple. There is that lull in the second half (despite the crashing thunderstorm with which music and sound designer Michael Roth launches it). And Tim Perez’s Claudio is a bit bloodless, as is Waymire’s Hero. More passion should fuel these lovers. But their transgressions are dwarfed by the totality of a production so lucidly articulated and so beautifully synchromeshed that to complain about any one of its parts seems downright churlish.

This is a “Much Ado” about a lot of things but mostly about the intelligent application of an old script to a new world. Times may have changed, but not human nature. And McAnuff’s success is in keeping faith with both the old and the new while keeping us immensely entertained.

* “Much Ado About Nothing,” La Jolla Playhouse, La Jolla Village Drive and Torrey Pines Road, La Jolla. Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7 p.m.; Saturdays-Sundays, 2 p.m. Ends Nov. 29. $19.75-$29.75; (619) 534-3960. Running time: 2 hours, 50 minutes. Clarence Felder: Leonato

Kellie Waymire: Hero

Monique Fowler: Beatrice

Clement Fowler: Antonio

Tonia Rowe: Ursula

Laura Innes: Margaret

Rodney Scott Hudson: Don Pedro

Tim Perez: Claudio

Mark Harelik: Benedick

David Harris: Balthasar

Michael Cerveris: Don John/A Sexton

Scott Ripley: Borachio

David Fenner: Conrade

David Brisbin: Dogberry

Clement Fowler: Verges

Bryan Bevell, James Jaboro, Jake Albert, Sarah Gunnell, Henry Harris, Rachel V. Malkenhorst, Preston Proffitt, Ross Wachsman Soldiers, Servants, Police.

Director Des McAnuff. Playwright William Shakespeare. Sets Robert Brill. Lights Chris Parry. Costumes David C. Woolard. Music/Sound Michael Roth. Choreographer John Malashock. Dramaturge Robert Blacker. Voice/Text Coach Catherine Fitzmaurice. Stage manager C.A. Clark. Assistant stage managers Kelly A. Martindale, Peggy Sasso.