Much Ado About Nothing 2013 - Articles Page 1.8

Like Kate and Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, which Arin Arbus directed last season, Beatrice and Benedick of Much Ado become a couple only after insult and attack. In this remarkably modern comedy, dazzling language becomes a mediating force between the fusty conventions of love and marriage and the complexities of extraordinarily intelligent and worldly-wise people. In Shakespeare’s stinging and thoughtful comedy of wit, victorious soldiers returning from war set their sights on the peacetime pleasures of clever banter and romance in a jaunty world of aristocratic artifice. However, when false information leads one proud nobleman to cruelly denounce his beloved on their wedding day, the verbal sparring sours into private warfare.