ABOUT FACE BackStage Review

Would you believe Shakespeare's Beatrice and Benedick as an English lit professor and football coach respectively? This pleasantly enjoyable retread of Much Ado About Nothing is set on a college campus in the mid-1950s.

There's some '50s pastiche, but David Arthur's book and often clever lyrics and Jeffrey Lodin's agreeable music are mostly in a traditional vein, including a show within the show that amusingly sends up Plain and Fancy. Beatrice Stanton is a bespectacled Barbara Walsh, and she's terrific as a lady who's come to value books over men, sounding lovely and conveying touching vulnerability underneath surface brittleness. Mark Zimmerman's gruff coach Bill Benedick — her rival for a much-coveted department grant — makes a good match, as their later scenes together demonstrate.

Aubrey Sinn does well as Vicki, who loves Claude (Nick Mannix), the quarterback ultimately duped into accusing her of infidelity. Mark Christine doubles impressively as bad boy Jake, who frames Vicki, and upstanding Peter, who improbably carries a torch for the older Beatrice. Rebecca Weiner's man-hungry Maggie sings of wanting a "big bad boy." Pamela Myers, as a flamboyant drama teacher who once understudied Merman, demonstrates some Mermanesque flourishes in her second-act opener, while veteran John Horton as the school's dean shares an especially poignant moment with Walsh, counseling her to "Look Again" at Bill.

The NYMF production has the trappings of a full mounting and is well paced by director Nick Corley, with some cute faux Fosse choreography by Mary MacLeod. Music director Dave Pepin leads an effective three-person ensemble.