Theatre review: Bard on the Beach opener Much Ado About Nothing mixes summery charm with updated reflections

With modernized touches and strong performances, this adaptation renews the wit and scheming of Shakespeare’s classic comedy

By Angie Rico

Jennifer Lines and Sheldon Elter in Much Ado About Nothing at Bard on the Beach. Photo by Tim Matheson

Bard on the Beach presents Much Ado About Nothing at the BMO Mainstage to September 20

IT’S THE START OF summer, and in the pocket of Bard on the Beach’s tents, the season arrives with a bit of hesitation. The warmth is here and so is the breeze. Every season has small cracks, moments when something cooler slips in. Much Ado About Nothing, Bard’s opening play, makes some deliberate room for that.  

It’s still all summery charm full of ripe fruit, breezy costumes, witty wordplay, romance, and mischief. This staging, directed by Johnna Wright, leans into all that warmth and ease but also knows when to let the air shift. It doesn’t take much; the text is already full of jealousy, lies, misguided honour, and a fair bit of misogyny that send everything veering off-course before love and reason can triumph, just barely. The edits to the classic comedy are small but pointed enough to make the temperature drop for a second.   

The set is pure summer: green countryside, bright archways enveloped in vines, a well that’s there for characters to pine beside. There’s excited talk of a trio of eligible bachelors arriving—Don Pedro, Benedick, Claudio—and Leonato, the wealthy host, welcomes them into his idyllic Mediterranean estate. His daughter Hero and niece Beatrice are there to greet them. That’s where the play usually begins.  

In this adaptation, it starts with Beatrice (Jennifer Lines) speaking directly to the audience, thinking aloud about what a young woman might see in the mirror, maybe while she gets ready to meet a potential suitor. She talks about women perching their breasts on their blouses “like doves”, reflects on the exhausting pressure on women to appear innocent all the time, and on how maybe women don’t think about any of that at all. It’s a great opening, confidently handled by Lines, and made all the better by the presence of Hero, Beatrice’s young cousin, standing on the upper runway, mirroring everything her older relative says in the monologue. The passage, adapted by writer Erin Shields, nestles into the world of the play with playful sharpness.   

From that modernized prologue on, Beatrice draws focus with her quick wit and self-assurance. While the young couple of Hero and Claudio fall fast, she and Benedick circle each other warily. There’s trickery, a fake death, and a wedding or two before all is said and done.

Jennifer Tong and Angus Yam in Bard on the Beach’s Much Ado About Nothing. Photo by Tim Matheson

Lines slips into the character's firecracker timing with great ease. Her big moment, later in the play—“O that I were a man for his sake!”—spills out with convincing vulnerability. The character’s softness also shows around Hero, who she protects, and that tenderness helps explain why she’s so guarded elsewhere.

The wilful Benedick (Sheldon Elter) meets her with the kind of posturing that’s ready to crumble. Elter leans into his comedic chops, playing him like a man-child, all puffed-up bravado and wounded pride. Some of the biggest laughs in the show come from the way he throws his whole body into lovestruck disbelief, like he can’t believe it’s happening to him either. Elter has the range to make the character’s vulnerability feel grounded during the more serious moments, though it’s in the comedy that he really shines.  

The romantic payoff isn’t entirely convincing, but that’s okay. This version makes space for the mismatch. Their stakes aren’t equal, even if they verbally spar like they are. It’s not a sweeping love story and ends up being more of a negotiation, but that feels more honest with the overall tone of the show. 

The rest of the ensemble does a solid job as well. Angus Yam gives a strong performance in the thankless role of Claudio. He plays him as all youthful angst, very easily swayed by the other men and dangerous in his power. Hero is handled sensibly by Jennifer Tong, who brings spark to a character often left silent. She’s lively and naive at first, and by the end, there’s a version of Hero with a little more say.  

Karthik Kadam’s Don John is a pretty fun-to-watch, plain-dealing villain who doesn’t have to scheme much for the men in the play to turn against the women. He breaks the fourth wall here and there, reminding us that this is still a comedy.  

Design-wise, this Much Ado About Nothing is all pretty straightforward and makes sure that the emotional baseline remains joy—people laughing, flirting, and eating grapes under the sun. Flamenco music shows up during an entertaining masquerade-ball sequence, even though the play is set in Italy. It’s not a big deal—romantic, soft guitar strums are a recurring theme anyway.

By the end, the wrongs are righted, the masks come off, and everyone’s more or less happy. The adaptation's minor edits leave something lingering in the air, and the classic comedy of gendered games breathes easier because of it. 

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