Signs and Semblances: The Problem of Likability in Some Recent Productions of Much Ado About Nothing

Following the “intertextual turn” in adaptation studies, scholars of Shakespearean performance have embraced the interpretive possibilities offered by infidelity, focusing increasingly on the corrective potential of recent stagings and adaptations. Such productions are not primarily valuable as progressive rewrites, however. In claiming not to be “Shakespeare”, these productions make testable claims about the nature of the Shakespearean playtext. In this paper, I examine two recent stage productions and one non-traditional film adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing: Kenny Leon’s 2019 Public Theater production, Chris Abraham’s 2023 Stratford Festival production, and Will Gluck’s 2023 romantic comedy Anyone But You. All three performances are consciously unfaithful to Shakespeare’s text or setting, and their revisions attend to making the characters’ behavior more palatable for a contemporary liberal–progressive audience. Yet when we compare these revisions with the original playtext, Shakespeare’s own views come into sharper relief, as does our own inclination to identify with characters that Shakespeare’s immediate audience may have felt quite distanced from. I argue that in their drive to correct the play and make the characters more likable, these productions paper over Shakespeare’s critique of the arbitrary construction—and violent enforcement—of social hierarchy. Drawing upon Jacques Derrida’s notion of the parergon, I show that Shakespeare’s deliberate narrative framing invites a more skeptical, disapproving understanding of his characters. My hope is that this discussion leads to an understanding of Much Ado About Nothing as a “problem play” rather than a “problematic” one.