A delightfully breezy Much Ado About Nothing opens this year’s Bard on the Beach season. A see-through set by Pam Johnson sketches a Mediterranean villa opening onto views of a rich countryside backdropped by the trees and sky of Sen?á?w/Vanier Park. On the gallery above the stage young Hero (Jennifer Tong), one of our two heroines, is fixing her hair, checking her face and her dress and learning about the new young person she is becoming. Watching her fondly from below is her older cousin, Beatrice (Jennifer Lines).

In brief this play is Shakespeare’s take on the old tale of the warring couple set against another old tale, that of love at first sight crushed by disaster. Will Beatrice and Benedick (Sheldon Elter) make up? Can Hero and Claudio (Angus Yam) recover their innocence? Stirring the plot is Don John, an outright villain played with insouciance by Karthik Kadam.

This is a comedy, as various members of the cast remind us from time to time. The requisite happy ending is achieved by the unlikely forces of the bumbling local lawmen. Scott Bellis's Dogberry is magnificently unaware of his torrent of malapropisms and his own incompetence. The other members of the Watch, especially Paige Fraser as Verges and Agnes Tong as Seacole, play their parts with such serious determination the opening night audience could hardly leave off laughing. .

On the dark side are Don John’s henchmen, Conrad - Kristi Hansen intense and menacing and Borachio, played by Tanner Zerr as a villain enthusiastically in love with his own cleverness.

Hero and Beatrice’s idyllic peace is broken as Don Pedro (Matthew Ip Shaw) suave and assured, returns from a successful military campaign with two officers, Benedick and the young Count Claudio. Claudio is a highly impressionable young man, but Angus Yam invests him with earnestness and charm. Benedick in contrast is flippant to a degree, mocking love and lovers in general and Claudio in particular and swearing he’ll never marry. Sharp-tongued as Benedick is, the banter between the three men is light and affectionate and echoed by the warmth, wit and energy of Beatrice, Hero and Hero’s father Leonato, an elegant David Marr. Above all, there is a sense of fun.

Sheldon Elter was playful and sharp-witted, even as he played down Benedick’s histrionics, comfortably coming into his own as his relationship with Beatrice warmed, lit with a lovely singing voice, a deft touch on the guitar. High-spirits, witty retorts, somewhere an underlying hurt, a sharp intelligence and an openness to change mark Beatrice as one of Shakespeare’s most attractive women. The incomparable Jennifer Lines delivered a Beatrice bubbling with life and laughter.

Mishelle Cuttler's music ranged from tart Elizabethan melancholy through lush Baroque lines and from Jacobean London through Spain to Sicily, subtly underpinning the text. Choreography by Jonathan Hawley Purvis gave us a joyous masquerade dance laced with danger. Designer Mara Gottler’s scarlet rabbit/wolf masks and bright skirts further heightened the hint of menace, while Claudio and Benedick’s loose-fitting uniforms suggested a temporary relaxation of army discipline. Both Don John and Don Pedro remained poised. Sophie Tang's sophisticated lighting palette focused attention and suffused a warm southern light through the air.

Director Johnna Wright has added more female parts to Shakespeare’s traditionally male-heavy cast of characters by simply giving male roles to female actors - Conrad and Seacole are a case in point – and by redistributing lines to Margaret (Agnes Tong) and Ursula (Jennifer Clement), originally merely Hero’s “waiting gentlewomen”. But she has gone farther by combining Leonato’s Brother and Ursula to create an entirely new character with all the force of a much-loved elderly aunt. Jennifer Clement is gently comic with character to spare.

Also an innovation is Wright’s use of additional text by Erin Shields. Commissioned for a Stratford Festival production, the new script gives Beatrice a new viewpoint in considering how women are seen and how they prepare and respond. The soliloquy for Beatrice which opens the play is intelligent and kind, drawing in the audience to watch the play in the same manner. To close the play, she has written Hero lines to defend herself, but more importantly she has written a scene in which Hero compels Claudio to own what he has done and how he must understand their future. Only then can a modern audience accept Claudio as a proper husband for Hero. Bravo.

© 2025 Elizabeth Paterson