What may be the world’s original rom-com, Much Ado About Nothing, is best known as the tale of Beatrice and Benedick, who exchange cutting remarks until they wind up falling in love. This new Bell Shakespeare production, helmed by Associate Director James Evans, doesn’t lose an opportunity to show Beatrice (Zindzi Okenyo) as a strong, independent woman. Time and again, the text gives her the wit and courage to point out the failings not just of Benedick (Duncan Ragg) but men in general.

Zindzi Okenyo and Duncan Ragg in Bell Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Photo © Clare Hawley

This production also works hard to reveal the misogyny and double standards inherent in the more troubled, even tragic romance between Claudio (Will McDonald) and Hero (Vivienne Awosoga), who is falsely accused of being a loose woman. From Beatrice’s eye-rolling early on when Hero brightly tells her fiancé that she’s a virgin, to a telling slap in the face toward the end, and the young men’s suggestive talk and gestures in between, this Much Ado About Nothing makes it clear there’s something rotten with the state of gender politics in Messina. That slap lingers...