Love blooms in Sicily

It would be difficult to witness the opening moments of this intensely Sicilian, gently paced working of the play without conjuring up memories and moments associated with Visconti?s lush and lasting film version of novelist Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa?s ?The Leopard,? a story set in the same general geographical area, albeit in a slightly earlier time period, and dealing with rather similar individuals, at least in terms of class and social standing.
Esbjornson?s Messina-situated production begins in a sort of stage equivalent of filmic slow motion, with a vast array of richly Italianate characters making their way through the portals, down the marble staircases and across the zig-zag patterned flooring of Christine Jones?s beautiful and inspired scenic design.
The Delacorte?s wonderfully expansive, endlessly adaptable playing area has never seemed so vast before, as the director?s collection of aristocrats and servants, sailors and cyclists, nuns and friars, washer women and assorted others, makes its way around the stage, while a favorite Sicilian melody fills the air, almost like an item from the soundtrack of a treasured Italian epic of an earlier vintage.
The vast, open feeling of Jones?s set, in fact, is a little misleading since it suggests the possibility of extended dance interludes and musical performances, for which it provides ample space.
Dance and music are, to be sure, present in this lovely production, but not in nearly the plentitude that the airy, open set, and the introductory music, seem to promise.
As the actors, resplendent in Jess Goldstein?s splendidly evocative and accurate-feeling costumes, go through the paces of their daily lives, while Friar Francis, the rich-voiced Park regular Steven Skybell, sings a Sicilian folk melody, everything seems to be in perfect order, as turns out, for the most part, to be wondrously the case.
?Much Ado About Nothing,? of course, is one of literature?s richest and most intelligent demonstrations of the eternal battle between the sexes, a kind of thinking man?s version of the more raucous ?Taming of the Shrew.?
The play?s warring lovers, Beatrice and Benedick, rank high among Shakespeare?s most intelligent and complicated central figures, and it is abundantly clear why major actors ranging from John Gielgud and Margaret Leighton, and then Kevin Kline and Blythe Danner, the later pair in a glorious Park version around a decade ago, have panted to play them.
Sam Waterston, the Leonato of the current production, was the Benedick opposite the beautiful Kathleen Widdoes?s Beatrice, when the Public staged the play in 1972, a much-praised staging which earned a Broadway transfer.
The self-deceiving, self-denying lovers of Esbjornson?s lovely production are the well-suited, clear-voiced Jimmy Smits and Kristen Johnston, both veterans of previous Park productions. Smits delivered an admirable Orsino in the otherwise undistinguished 2002 ?Twelfth Night,? a solid performance which suggested little if any of the welcome freedom and loose-jointed wit he brings to his Benedict.
He refers to his vis-