Much Ado About Nothing Masqueraders Analysis

New Mexico, Here We Go! - Traveling Back in Time with the Masqueraders There’s nothing like leather cowboy boots, upbeat Tejano music, and a glorious desert sunset to transport you to 20th century southwest. The Masqueraders’ production of Much Ado About Nothing incorporates elements of colonial Spanish culture to shift the original setting of Tuscany, Italy to post-World War I New Mexico and produce a unique and beautiful adaptation of Shakespeare’s play. Through this creative recontextualization of the setting of Much Ado About Nothing, the Masqueraders enhance and emphasize the comedic effects of the play while helping the modern-day audience enjoy and understand the work to the same extent as the audience of the Shakespearian era. As the play begins, the stage opens up to a hacienda, designed to reflect some of the local architecture of

In this scene, Claudio and Don Paul fool Benedict into believing that Beatrice is madly in love with him through dramatic irony. Although I initially expected most of the attention to be on Claudio and Don Paul as Benedict hid off to the stage, the Masqueraders put a more hilarious spin to this scene. In the play, as Claudio and Don Paul pretend to divulge Beatrice’s “secret” by speaking loudly in Benedict’s direction, Benedict overtly scampers around the stage like a child trying to find a spot to hide in a game of hide-and-seek, hiding behind the pillars of the hacienda and the rungs of the ladder. I found Benedict’s exaggerated shocked and love-struck facial expressions, as well as Claudio and Don Paul’s dramatized way of revealing Beatrice’s secret, to be hilarious and well-executed. Though the production does not use scene changings and is limited to one setting, the Masqueraders turn this limitation into an asset, using the small stage as a source of humor and emphasizing the comedic effects Shakespeare intended his play to