Theatre in Review: These Paper Bullets! (Atlantic Theater Company)

	Nicole Parker, James Barry. Photo: Ahron Foster.

If playwrights can't stop themselves from raiding Shakespeare's larder, they should be more careful about what they steal. (Don't pretend that this doesn't go on all the time: I've lost track of how many musicals have been made out of Twelfth Night.) For example, Rolin Jones' These Paper Bullets!, which is billed as "a modish ripoff of William Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing" -- words that almost render criticism unnecessary -- borrows heavily from the plot of that classic romantic comedy. (It's not a musical, by the way, even if there are songs, which we'll get to in a moment.) But the plots are always the least interesting thing about Shakespeare's plays. For one, they are usually secondhand, having been cobbled together from a variety of sources; for another, regular theatregoers have seen most of them many times; they know what's coming.

Stripped of the author's stunning language and character insights that remain relevant four centuries later, Much Ado About Nothing is a silly, mechanical thing, constructed of two narrative lines that are tonally at odds. Thus, the onus was on Jones to bring something new and fresh to Shakespeare's outline, to justify his appropriation of it. Mostly, what he has brought to These Paper Bullets! are vulgar, unfunny gags about massage parlors, drugs, gonorrhea, and pubic hair. It's Shakespeare, coarsened and pitched at an audience of 21st-century groundlings. I want my Bard back.

These Paper Bullets! resets Much Ado in Swinging London, with a nod to Help!, Richard Lester's mock-thriller film for the Beatles, as well as all those movies from the early '60s in which various members of the establishment fret about the morally corrosive effects of rock-and-roll. Beatrice and Benedick, Shakespeare's warring wits, are reconceived as mod trendsetters. She is a Mary Quant-style fashion designer, known for her sky-high hemlines and plastic garments; he is the front man for The Quartos (get it?), a band that will remind you of another Fab Four even if their mop-top wigs make them look like furry woodland creatures. Claudio, the ardent young lover in Shakespeare's subplot, is now Claude, a member of The Quartos; Hero, his innocent love interest, is Higgy, a Quaalude-popping fashion model on Beatrice's payroll. Don John, the original play's villain, is now Don Best, the percussionist who was drummed out of The Quartos, now serving them as a glorified roadie/personal assistant. (Adding insult to injury, he was replaced by his brother.) Dogberry, the inept constable, is Mr. Berry, a fatheaded Scotland Yard inspector with a number of operatives, in disguise, who have been assigned to spy on The Quartos, armed with bugged lampshades. (The title comes from a speech of Benedick's: "Shall quips and sentences and these paper bullets of/The brain awe a man from the career of his humour?")

The play begins with Mr. Berry screening a documentary, "What is Wrong with the Youth of England?"-- one of several clever contributions by the projection designer Nicholas Hussong, which amusingly intimates that the likes of David Hockney and Vidal Sassoon are undermining the British way of life. However, the following exchange between Berry and Mr. Urges, a detective, sets the tone:

Mr. Urges: Spot of tea, Mr. Berry?

Mr. Berry: Is it proper tea?

Mr. Urges: Darjeeling.

Mr. Berry: German, is it?

Mr. Urges: Indian, I believe.

Mr. Berry: That's just what they want you to believe.....Das-jeeling. That's just what Mrs. Berry says before she throws it in our dog's face.

There's far too much of this sub-Benny Hill fooling around, all of it delivered at a rattling pace, as if the actors hope to sneak whole pages past the audience without getting caught. (At the performance I attended, about a dozen people giggled nonstop; elsewhere, the silence of the grave prevailed.) While some of the original text is retained, much of it is a painful pastiche marked by awful rhymes. Take this exchange of insults:

Benedick: What angry barber cut your hair?

Beatrice (pointing at Benedick's crotch): What brand of sock is stuffed in there?

Need I add that, when she isn't looking, he withdraws an athletic sock from his pants?

And so it goes; gag after sniggering gag is launched, only to fizzle in mid-air and fall to earth with a thud. Commenting on Higgy's apparent modesty, one of The Quartos notes that a "modest model" is like "a fish in a massage parlor." Claude, losing faith in his beloved, cries out, "Love's a sack of dicks." A reporter, calling in a headline to the press room, calls it "the biggest story since Her Majesty got her tits lifted." At a press conference, The Quartos announce a new album titled "Rub My Bowl" (and yes, the Rubber Soul logo typeface is used.) Overhearing a plan to sneak Higgy in through the rear of the church for her wedding, thus avoiding the press, one of her model chums drawls, "Did you hear that, Higgy? Your dad's taking you in the rear." Higgy, getting cold feet about marriage, imagines herself transformed by motherhood, screaming, "Young girls don't buy dresses from a model whose vagina is dragging on the ground!"

The director, Jackson Gay, has seemingly instructed her cast to take it to eleven, which accounts for the general note of hysteria. Nicole Parker mugs ferociously as Bea, playing most of her scenes with a look that suggests there is a really bad smell on stage. As Benedick, Justin Kirk delivers equally frantic line readings in an irritating voice that sounds like it's a couple of steps above his normal tone. Their lack of chemistry is not helped by the fact that both characters drop out of the action for long stretches, or that they are given so many lame bits of slapstick to perform. He is made to wrestle with an aggressive owl and she has to hide out in a bearskin rug, accidentally stick her hand in a bucket of vomit, or wrestle with a used condom that is dropped on her head.

The overall tone of free-floating vulgarity undermines a key plot development. In Much Ado, Hero is accused of sexual promiscuity, a charge with mortal implications in Shakespeare's worldview. So grave is it that Hero fakes her death until such time as her reputation can be restored, and Beatrice and Benedick are forced to drop their poses and reach out to each other for real. In These Paper Bullets!, Claude dumps Higgy at the altar, an act broadcast to the world by the BBC, but in the libertine world of the play it's hard to believe that virginity is anyone's priority. (There is a lame attempt at noting male sexual hypocrisy, but it is too little, too late.) In any case, Higgy is too strung out on drugs when it happens, making it a little bit hard to see her as a wronged innocent.

Among the supporting players, Bryan Fenkart struggles to lend Claude some charm, and Ariana Venturi has a couple of likable moments as Higgy. Stephen DeRosa offers another zesty character turn as Leo Messina, Higgy's father, a hotelier with plenty of promotional ideas. Keira Naughton, decked out in a wig that makes her look like Joanna Lumley in Absolutely Fabulous, does her deadpan best as one of Higgy's boozy companions; given her skill at underplaying, she might have been a better choice for Bea. Liz Wisan is fun as a supremely unctuous BBC reporter. ("I've just been told to shut up," she whispers into her mic, having been disciplined by the priest at the Claude-Higgy wedding.) Christopher Geary is deft as both The Quartos' all-seeing manager and Queen Elizabeth II, who shows up once or twice to cast a gimlet eye on the morally loose proceedings.

The best thing about These Paper Bullets! is the suite of Beatle-esque songs, written by Billie Joe Armstrong and performed by The Quartos. You will swear that each of them came from the minds of Lennon and McCartney; if they do a great deal to keep the mood buoyant throughout, they also point up the general lack of wit elsewhere on stage. (My favorites are "Regretfully Yours," and "Keeps Me Satisfied" -- if this were an episode of American Bandstand, I'd give each of them a 10.)

Michael Yeargan's set features a turntable that is constantly being loaded with and stripped of furniture, all of which is stacked upstage in full audience view; the good part is The Quartos get to make some mighty dramatic entrances; the bad part is the stage looks awfully cluttered. Hussong's projections include a London skyline with an adjustable viewing angle in concert with the turntable's moves; he also creates an entertaining collage of newspaper headlines relating to the Claude-Higgy wedding. Jessica Ford's costumes, those awful wigs aside, have true period flavor, especially Bea's designs, all of which could have come from Twiggy's closet. Paul Whitaker's lighting is totally solid, but the sound design, by Broken Chord, is awfully muddy when The Quartos play. This may well be because the Atlantic, a highly reverberant space designed for plays, is a markedly less-than-ideal venue for electric instruments and amplification.

In any case, the songs, as delightful as they are, are not enough to justify these witless, tasteless, hypercaffeinated goings-on. If you're tempted to check this one out, my advice is to let it be.--David Barbour