In this case, it is not a comment about Mitt Romney’s moral center, but rather refers to the Shakespeare play by that name. Which I saw last night. At the Shakespeare Theatre Company.

I bought the tickets a while back and took with me my friend, the punk rock pixie girl.

The setting was pre-revolutionary Cuba, which worked fine in most ways. “Messina,” like most Italian locations in Shakespeare, were not real. To my knowledge, he walked on a single speck of Italian dirt. Italy was just a stand in for “passionate, hot blooded, and exotic.” And, just like the Caribbean today, it stands in for a more relaxing, easy going environment.

The use of a faux Spanish accent by a handful of characters was disturbing, especially since the only male characters to utilize it were an African-American and a couple of bit part characters playing variations on Speedy Gonzalez’s slow and lazy cousin, that the female who used it was doing a lusty, raunchy, latina thing – so a touch of racial stereotyping, to my ears. Especially when the major players did not use a Spanish accent.

But otherwise, the appearance of an occasional Cuban flag, dropping “Havana” into conversation, and some Cuban style music (plus, the watchmen singing Guantanamera) was just fine.

Having never seen a production on the stage before, my main point of comparison was Kenneth Branagh’s movie of the play.

Like the movie, when Don Pedro jokingly proposes to Beatrice, you can hear that he’s not really joking, just trying to protect his dignity in the (likely) event of ‘no.’

And, at first, I felt that Don John was channeling Keanu Reeve’s reprehensible performance, but then also saw that whoever plays Don John is really given very little work with.

Though the plot is ostensibly about the ups and downs Claudio and Hero’s love/wedding, the main characters are actually Benedict and Beatrice.

I remember that Branagh played Benedict as a bit of fool, but here, he is played much less the fool and much more the world weary wit. And the affection that underlays his back and forth with Beatrice is visible even before other characters plot to bring them together, which makes their eventual coming together more real, more mature and much more a marriage of equals.

Which also puts the Claudio/Hero romance in a poor light. They look young and callow in comparison. This isn’t a bad thing – Shakespeare, in this play, really does show the difference between youthful, moody, crushes and two people who come together as much over a union of mind and nature as over each other’s good looks.

Fortunately, Benedict and Beatrice (Benedict, in particular) were the stronger actors.