The Public Theater 2019 Much Ado About Nothing

Decked out in a peach T-shirt, black leggings, and an African-inspired sweater duster—her hair in long locs—black actress Danielle Brooks struts across the stage speaking lines about another character’s propensity to have a new “brother” every month. This is a gloriously black performance, which is all the more enchanting since Brooks isn’t acting in a contemporary play written with the black experience in mind. Instead, this is The Public Theater’s 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing, which was also filmed for the Great Performances series on PBS. This production weaves contemporary social issues with Shakespeare’s own words, creating an updated but thought-provoking look at the classic comedy.

In what may now seem like a prescient move, Tony-award-winning director Kenny Leon changed the setting to an upscale black neighborhood of Atlanta (Aragon, Georgia, to be exact) in a future 2020 election season highlighted by civil unrest. At the beginning of the play, after the four main female characters give a soul-stirring rendition of “America the Beautiful” meshed with Marvin Gaye’s 1971 “What’s Goin’ On,” a song addressing the violence and injustice of police brutality, Don Pedro’s army marches in from their latest skirmish on the front lines. Dressed in matching maroon uniforms, carrying picket signs as their weapons, they bridge the gap between the formal armies of war in the original text and the informal protests spreading across America today. This war, then, is an American war of ideology, where “hate is not a family value”…