Much Ado About Nothing

Much Ado About Nothing

Bard on the Beach to September 20, 2025

Tickets from $35 at 604-739-0559 or www.bardonthebeach.org

Posted June 26, 2025

When director Johnna Wright cast the effervescent Jennifer Lines – she of the riotous tresses and a smile that lights up the whole BMO Mainstage – Wright knew she would have a Much Ado About Nothing that would be really something. And it is, for various reasons.

The Bard program shows Much Ado About Nothing with “Additional text by Erin Shields”; Vancouverplays.com lists the show as Much Ado About Nothing “by William Shakespeare with Erin Shields.”  A Canadian playwright, Shields is “best known for radical adaptations of classical texts which bring neglected female characters centre stage” (from a 2024 interview with Playwrights Canada Press). And if ever there was a neglected female character, it’s Hero in Much Ado About Nothing. Slandered by Don John on the very eve of her wedding to Claudio, Hero – in Shakespeare’s text – meekly marries Claudio once he accepts that she is innocent. In Shields’ additional text, Hero reams Claudio out in a fairly lengthy monologue; Hero asks Claudio how he would feel if there actually had been a romantic attachment prior to their betrothal. He hesitates but once he admits, “I am not worthy of your love”, she forgives him and the wedding is back on.

Hero’s forgiveness has always been a problem with Much Ado About Nothing for modern audiences. It’s a damned if you do/damned if you don’t situation: when Hero quietly marries Claudio despite his unexamined, groundless accusations, it’s deeply unsatisfying. But if she goes on a feminist rant, it’s completely at odds with the gender politics of the Elizabethan period. Moreover, it skews the play, shifting the focus off Beatrice and Benedick to Hero. Nothing in the play up to that point suggests Hero has the acuity to frame the issue so succinctly.

Shields’ revisioning of Shakespeare’s play for the Stratford Festival of Canada was received with mixed reviews as I suspect this Bard on the Beach production also will. Here is Shields’ webpage (www.erinshields.ca) statement: “For the Stratford Festival’s Production of Much Ado About Nothing, I wrote a prologue for Beatrice and a new scene seamlessly inserted into Act 5 in which Hero responds to the violence she has endured throughout the play. It is my hope that this additional text both gives an opportunity for a limited character to reach her heroic potential and provides a framework for this incredibly successful comedy to reach contemporary audiences in an even deeper way today.”

Erin Shields’ additional text aside, this is a joyous, rambunctious production. A couple of times a character remarks, “Hey, it’s a comedy” and so it is. The rapier-sharp wordplay between Beatrice (Lines) and Benedick (Sheldon Elter) is sassy, quick, fun and full of double entendres. There are pratfalls and much hiding behind the shrubbery. Lines shows amazing physical strength and comedic skill in a prolonged, one-handed, hanging-from-a-vine-covered-trellis scene with her legs flailing and her petticoats swirling. There are charming scenes that combine decorous, classic Elizabethan dancing with boisterous folk-style dancing. As Dogberry, Scott Bellis’s repeated “I am an ass” and malapropisms are hilarious. Director Wright and the cast mine the play for all the humour they can find. And then go looking for more.

While there is lots of chemistry between Hero (Jennifer Tong) and Claudio (Angus Yam), I found little between Lines and Elter in the first part of the evening. Indeed, Elter’s early goofiness made him an unlikely match with this Beatrice who, for all her saucy rebelliousness, is a serious character. But Elter redeems Benedick in the second half of the evening, especially when his character stands up for Hero and agrees to Beatrice’s request that he kill Claudio for his wicked treatment of Hero.

David Marr makes a solid, decent Leonato and Jennifer Clement is (amazingly) credible as a crotchety, grey-haired old woman. Clement has impressive range: a fashion-wise Ursula, mother of Proteus, in The Two Gentlemen of Verona one night, and Ursula, ancient attendant on Hero, in Much Ado About Nothing the next.

Doing double duty with Two Gentlemen is Pam Johnson’s many-arched, vine and flower bedecked set. Mara Gottler provides gorgeous period costumes including Hero’s stunning wedding gown, Leonato’s gold, father-of-the-bride ensemble as well as the raggedy layers of the village’s Members of the Watch.

Whether you are okay with Shields’ additions to the text, this Bard on the Beach production under the capable direction of Johnna Wright, is undeniable fun and made completely accessible by this skilled cast. It will initiate some interesting conversations about gender politics then and now as well as discussions about just how much meddling we should be doing with Shakespeare.