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.
1787 | Broadway |
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1869 | Broadway |
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1900 | Broadway |
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1904 | Broadway |
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1904 | Broadway |
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1907 | Broadway |
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1912 | Broadway |
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1912 | Broadway |
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1913 | Broadway |
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1913 | Broadway |
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1927 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1952 | Broadway |
Broadway |
1959 | Broadway |
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1972 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1972 | Broadway |
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1984 | Broadway |
Broadway Revival Broadway |
1987 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
1988 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2001 | Off-Broadway |
Off-Broadway |
2004 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park Off-Broadway |
2011 | West End |
Shakespeare's Globe Production West End |
2012 | West End |
West End |
2013 | Off-Broadway |
Theatre for a New Audience Production Off-Broadway |
2014 | Off-Broadway |
Public Theater's Shakespeare in the Park Off-Broadway |
2016 | West End |
Royal Shakespeare Company West End Revival Production West End |
2018 | West End |
Rose Theatre Kingston Ten-Year Anniversary Production West End |
2019 | Off-Broadway |
Shakespeare In the Park Off-Broadway |
West End |
West End |
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