'Much Ado' and Its Fabulous Black Cast Rock Shakespeare in the Park

THE FIRST THING YOU notice at this sassy, stylish, street-smart “Much Ado About Nothing” is the set. Beowulf Boritt has built what appears to be a whole two-story-plus red brick manor, warm with golden lamplight pouring from the windows and plastered with a couple of “Stacey Abrams 2020” banners. (Apparently, we’re not in Messina, a Sicilian port, anymore. We must be near Atlanta.)

Boritt has done the scenic design for more than 20 Broadway productions (in a relatively short 14-year career so far) and won his Tony in 2014 for “Act One.” This creation — making an estate of the Delacorte Theater stage, nestled in the trees of Upper West Side-adjacent Central Park — is an understated masterwork.

The next thing you notice is Danielle Brooks (far left in large photo, all by herself in the head shot) who plays Beatrice. The character is usually played as a sly wit but, as Alexandra Schwartz observed in The New Yorker, Brooks gets it devastatingly right when she “lets her be a clown.”

This Beatrice’s first great moment, though, is pure drama. As she belts Marvin Gaye (“What’s going on?”), other actresses join in, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and the two numbers blend in powerful ways.

Schwartz also pronounced the show “magical in all the right ways.” In The New York Times, Jesse Green called it “delicious” comedy. In Variety, Marilyn Stasio called it “a slap-happy, dance-crazy version” of the romance. Press Nights wouldn’t go quite as far as slap-happy, but we second the motions on magical and delicious.

Sara Holdren of New York magazine and Vulture, disagreed, calling the production “intermittently enjoyable.” But she did praise the cast and the lead characters’ chemistry.

Shakespeare gave this romantic comedy, first produced in London around 1599, its self-deprecating title for good reason. What we have here are a highly verbal couple (well, would-be couple) with attitude. Dueling attitude. Beatrice and Benedick (the debonair Grantham Coleman, with Brooks in photo) are too busy making snarky remarks to admit — or even realize — they’re perfect for each other. So their friends have to trick them into letting the love flow.

But this is a two-couple romantic comedy, and the subplot is a little tougher to sell to 21st-century New Yorkers and their visitors than it probably was to early-16th-century Englishfolk. Claudio (Jeremie Harris) loves Hero (Margaret Odette) and vice versa, but as their wedding day (in photo) approaches, Claudio is tricked into believing Hero is — gasp — not a virgin. (She is, btw.) And there’s no doubt in William Shakespeare’s mind that that’s just the sort of thing best handled by shaming a bride and leaving her at the altar. Kenny Leon, the Tony-winning director, and his tuned-in modern cast work around that as best they can.

Shakespeare in the Park veterans know that its producers rarely yield to weather. Allowing a performance to be rained out is close to sacrilege. On the night my guest (AS) and I attended, there was a downpour during Act I, which caused a significant delay. Audience members huddled in covered parts of the theater structure (luckily, the bar line is sheltered), then returned to their seats.

That meant the performance ended at 11:15 p.m., about an hour later than it normally would have, but the final scene — a gratifyingly Shakespearean double wedding — transcended it all.

For those who missed the glory of seeing this show in the park in any kind of weather, there is a consolation prize. PBS filmed one of the last performances and will broadcast it on “Great Performances” — date to be announced. We have our fingers tightly crossed that the cameras follow Ms. Brooks when her Beatrice hides from Benedick by sneaking into various places in the audience. Come to think of it, maybe “slap-happy” is no exaggeration.

[Coming up next at Shakespeare in the Park: “Coriolanus,” July 16 through Aug. 11. It’s a tragedy about a Roman general who thinks he’d be really good at politics. He is mistaken.]

“Much Ado About Nothing,” Delacorte Theater, Central Park, publictheater.org, 2 hours 20 minutes. Limited run (Shakespeare in the Park always is). Closed on June 23.