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Much Ado – The Musical
A Teacher Rewrites Shakespeare
In the 38 years that Annie McManners has been teaching Drama, 27 of them at FIS, she guesses that she has direct- ed at least 32 musicals. But none of those has she written
herself.
All of that changed in 2015. While summering on the Shetland Islands, an idea kept nagging at her – to write a modern musical version of a Shakespearean classic.
The more she thought about it, the more her idea evolved. By the time school started in August, she had penned an adaptation to her all-time favorite, Much Ado About Nothing – but this time with a twist: the setting would not be Medina, but California instead. The 1960s. The “summer of love.”
Everything about that time period appealed to me,” said Ms. McManners. “I love the fashion, the music, the art, the colors.”
Of course, coming up with the setting was the easy part.
“Just setting Shakespeare to music doesn’t really work since the rhythms are all wrong,” Ms. McManners said. “And his comedies when you just read them on the page, aren’t actually that funny,” she added with a laugh. “You have to find the right song that enhances a particular moment in the action.”
It’s easy to remain isolated, but to be in the same room with someone, bouncing ideas off one another is a grand. You can never stop learning.
Bringing out the comedy in Ms. McManners’ Much Ado – The Musical required the creative use of language. Purposeful mispronunciation of words and regional accents helped give characters a persona that audiences could laugh with – and laugh at. But physical appearances helped, too. Oversized clothes and padding were used to create rounded bellies, and Ms. McManners cast some of the tallest actors with some of the shortest, largely for comic effect.
The other big challenge was finding music and creating a set. Without a musical score to work from, Ms. McManners had to make one up. Fortunately, popular music from the 1960s and 1970s fit well with the theme, and in many cases even helped reinforce the story line. In one of the musical’s scenes, Vietnam War veterans return stateside singing Thin
Lizzy’s The Boys are Back in Town, setting the mood but also quite literally expressing the sentiments of the “boys” returning home. “My living room was strewn with CD’s as I kept thinking of other songs that would be great to use in the show,” she said.
As an experiment, Ms. McManners asked students to help create the set with an “anything goes” approach. What they came up with was perfect – a multi-media mash up with photographs and video that were displayed on a screen behind the actors. Combined with professional lighting and carefully selected music, the images helped create an exuberant atmosphere of light, color and sound.
“Atmosphere is one of the most important things,“ Ms. McManners said. “Especially when you have minimal sets.”
With the casting, music and set complete, just one missing piece remained: choreography. For that, Ms. McManners called upon her long-time colleague and fellow FIS Dance and Drama teacher, Helen Balfour.
Ms. McManners’ past musical productions had included some basic choreography, but for Much Ado she could say to Ms. Balfour, “this is a kind of slow motion dream here,” and Ms. Balfour would just make it happen. “That’s the delight of working with a dance specialist,” Ms. McManners said. “To be in the same room with someone bouncing ideas off one another is grand. You can never stop learning.”
On opening night, the FIS Auditorium was packed with families and despite being a first-run show, many parents found some familiarity as the musical unfolded. “I sang along the whole night,” said one parent. What a statement for a world premiere.
Ricky Donnelly, FIS Staff Writer
16 FIS World February 2016