SOURCE: Laws, Page R. “Much Ado About Nothing.” Theatre Journal 54, no. 2 (2002): 305-07.

In the following review, Laws describes how New York's Aquila Theatre Company successfully turned Much Ado about Nothing into a giddy spoof of television's secret agent shows of the 1960s and 1970s.

Shakespeare's classic insights on true love's weal and woe still prove uncannily accurate whether actors wear tights or no. There was certainly much undone to rev up Much Ado in The Aquila Theatre Company's outrageously premised 2001 touring production. The respected Anglo-American company based at New York University turned the 1599 comedy into a spoof of 1960s-70s TV and film secret agents. Messina becomes Spy-versus-Spy Land; there is little loss of the play's essence in the temporal transfer and a surprising gain in its inherent giddiness (cf. Benedick's “for man is a giddy thing and this is my conclusion” [5.4.108-9]).

Shakespeare's themes of love versus...