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Review: Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe

Shakespeare's Globe's summer production of Much Ado About Nothing, with its whitewashed walls and linen-suited actors, evokes Kenneth Branagh's 1993 film. But oversized animal masks add a unique twist.

BroadwayWorld·Jun 20, 2026·via BroadwayWorld

Review: Much Ado About Nothing at Shakespeare's Globe

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The Globe launches its second Shakespearean comedy of the summer

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With its whitewashed walls and actors swanning around in linen suits, inevitably the Globe’s summer staging of Much Ado About Nothing will recall Kenneth Branagh ’s Tuscany-set film version from 1993. That is, until they whip out the oversized animal masks.

This kind of tonal mismatch is characteristic of this production, directed by Chelsea Walker . This version of Shakespeare’s classic deception comedy manages to be both minimalist and maximalist at once, starting with an ensemble of costumes ranging from TikTok-favoured butter yellow sundresses to BDSM harnesses, by way of sharp 1970s tailoring, offering a confused sense of time and place.

At times, Walker seems to want to uncover some darker underbelly in the play; those kitschy animal masks worn at the masquerade ball early on seem to hint at primal emotional instincts about to be unleashed. There is a sense of genuine fear and hesitation in Benedick’s reaction to being asked to kill his friend Claudio, for instance. Just a couple of scenes later, though, Hero’s false funeral is rendered in gothic high camp, with dry ice, a strings accompaniment and the entire cast performing a choreographed dance in dark sunglasses.

Walker is at her strongest at the play’s emotional zeniths, especially in the second act. Some of the scenes following Hero’s humiliation and ‘death’ are staged sparsely and without fanfare, leading to affecting performances of grief from Jonathan McGuinness as Leonato and Geraldine Alexander as a female version of the Friar. Walker also does not shy away from the sexualised violence Hero (Assa Kanouté) experiences at the hands of Claudio and Don John, including an unexpectedly shocking moment of rage involving wedding cake.

Something gets lost, though, when the play essentially becomes a revolving door of elaborate set pieces – Benedick and Beatrice’s farcical eavesdropping scenes, or the several choreographed dances. So much of the text revolves around gossip and rumours twisted to suit a particular character’s whims, yet the quieter scenes, where these traps are set, are treated as obstacles to bypass on the way to the next set piece, rather than as opportunities to demonstrate the various characters’ motives.

Still, Much Ado is a text very capable of standing on its own without directorial gimmick, especially when carried by this cast. As in many other productions, Benedick ( Ken Nwosu ) and Beatrice ( Pippa Nixon ) steal focus; their “merry war” is played here as two people desperately guarding themselves against vulnerability, rather than any kind of genuine conflict. Meanwhile, Joseph Potter’s sinister Don John prowls around like an undetonated explosive, obsessive about Hero yet also repressing an implied romantic connection to his friend Borachio ( Marlowe Chan-Reeves ).

This is a version of Much Ado that wants to be taken seriously, but it’s still Beatrice getting accidentally hosed while eavesdropping on her friends that get the most audible reactions from the audience. There’s a sense here of scenes from multiple productions spliced together, as though there’s a more developed, more coherent version of Much Ado still waiting to be unearthed.

Much Ado About Nothing plays at Shakespeare’s Globe until 24 October

Photo credits: Marc Brenner

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/westend/article/Review-MUCH-ADO-ABOUT-NOTHING-Shakespeares-Globe-20260619)._

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