Viel Lärm um nichts

Recording from the Burgtheater, 2007

In Shakespeare’s madcap comedy, different levels of reality collide. The men return from war to their “paradise at home,” where the women have, until now, managed quite well without a man by their side. They feel like strangers in this world, where battles are suddenly fought not with swords for victory, but with words for emotions. Two couples who couldn’t be more different are pitted against one another: on one side, Claudio and Hero, who want to get married sooner rather than later even though they barely know each other, and who are prevented from doing so by the intrigues of the malicious Don John; on the other side, Beatrice and Benedict, who have sworn never, under any circumstances, to get involved with the opposite sex, but who ultimately end up getting married. For director Jan Bosse, the story of the first self-proclaimed singles in theater history unfolds in a world of pseudo-idyll. An artificial world of superficiality and illusion, created solely to satisfy instincts for a society that would most like to take a vacation from itself. Allowing oneself to love is harder here than one might think—or than the theater would have us believe. Yet the audience can take pleasure in how Shakespeare sketches out true verbal erotica, whose fetish is wit and quick-wittedness. Out of self-love, they inflate their egos to such an extent that the true object of their passion almost slips from their view. At the end of the comedy, the world of confusing appearances triumphs—a world in which wit, harmless folly, and love turn out to be nothing more than strategies, without which survival in this society of cunning deception would simply be impossible.