Shakespeare On The Edge Of Slander
Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt — whose book “The Swerve” was one of my favorite reads of 2012 — writes: ‘In a curious way the central figure in the splendid new film of “Much Ado About Nothing (pictured),” directed by Joss Whedon (“Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “The Avengers”), is the house in which the events unfold. Not that the house—Whedon’s own—is particularly remarkable. It is a comfortable, sprawling Santa Monica McMansion, no doubt very expensive, with more than a touch of a suburb about it. But that is the point: we are not in faraway Sicily, where Shakespeare set the story, or in glorious, technicolor Tuscany, where Kenneth Branagh set his admirable film adaptation twenty years ago.’
