Much Ado About Nothing, Signal Ensemble Theatre, at the Athenaeum Theatre. The tragedies and histories may gush more blood, but for all their ferocity, they’ve got nothing on the archaic sexism of Shakespeare’s comedies. The troubles visited on their luckless heroines often seem sprung from the savage mind of a 13-year-old patriarch, and the underlying complacency throws it all into stark relief–to a modern audience, more than a few of the insults and agonies inflicted are wildly alienating, especially in the context of light entertainment, and their resolutions are even more dumbfounding. Case in point: Much Ado About Nothing, in which the ingenue Hero is courted by proxy, engaged without consult, doubted without hesitation, tried in absentia, found guilty on the word of a cartoon villain, and subjected to a shockingly over-the-top public humiliation by her husband-to-be. Then he forgives her and everything’s OK.
