Much Ado About Nothing

Directed by Chris Jean, this production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing sets the play a few years after the first World War amidst the jubilant decadence and burgeoning sexual politics of the Roaring Twenties/Jazz Age. In love with wordplay and their own wittiness Beatrice and Benedick are the perfect match for each other; if only their pride could hesitate for a moment to see the ‘forest from the trees.’ While Beatrice and Benedick illustrate love at its intellectual ideal, it is youthful Claudio and Hero who personify love at first sight. The passion without reason between Claudio and Hero allows a mischievous deposed prince to wreak havoc with everyone involved and tests the allegiances of both couples. Throw in the woefully inept self-aggrandizing Sheriff Dogberry and her deputy, gun-toting The Verges and trouble may certainly meet its match.