Ahead of Its MTC Season, Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing Has Never Been So Relevant

For the first time in 30 years, the Melbourne Theatre Company brings Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing to local stages. At its core, this “will they, won’t they” rom-com explores universal themes: love, deception, societal pressures and the power of reputation. But how does a play written more than 400 years ago resonate with contemporary audiences?

We’ve seen modern adaptations before (like Anyone But You featuring Sydney Sweeney), but this latest iteration promises a new take on Shakespeare’s most modern rom-com.

The production is helmed by director Mark Wilson, who is probably best known for his experimental and sometimes radical Shakespeare adaptations (Unsex Me, Richard II, Anti-Hamlet). His production of Much Ado will be delivered with modern costuming and on a two-storey set, which includes a striking, central image of Pamela Anderson. What does Pammy have to do with Shakespeare? The award-winning designer behind the set piece is Anna Cordingley, who took inspiration from The Newman House, an iconic St Kilda home designed by Cassandra Fahey.

Helpmann Award-winner Alison Bell (The Letdown) takes on the role of the strong-willed Beatrice, while AACTA Award-winner Fayssal Bazzi (Stateless) delivers his Melbourne Theatre Company debut as dedicated bachelor Benedick.

Broadsheet chatted to Bell during rehearsals about how the play has found new relevance in 2025.

“The idea of slander looms pretty large in this play, and it looms pretty large in the world,” Bell tells Broadsheet. “On social media, there is so much pulling down of people.

“I think audiences have an enormous capacity now to sit with two opposing things at once, because our world is like that. And the way we tell stories is like that… I think that’s why the Benedick and Beatrice story is so beautiful and resonant now, because they hear some terrible things about themselves and they reckon with the truth of it – they actually go, ‘oh, hang on a second! Maybe I have been too proud. Maybe I have been too hasty in my appraisals of this person, or haven’t been honest or authentic in how I’ve represented myself, or how I’ve represented them’… [it] is a beautiful example of people reckoning with themselves and their own follies, and changing for the better.”

Beyond the modern political and social implications of Beatrice and Benedick’s toxic love story, there’s commentary about gender and perceptions of women’s “bad behaviour”.

“There are aspects to the play that reflect his time, but I think the shadow of that time is very long,” says Bell. “What’s happening in the manosphere and right-wing politics – I think, frighteningly, we are not that far from those old opinions. But at the same time, Shakespeare was dealing with the first female monarch who was ruling in her own right and I think that gave him space to write a far more modern woman into this play. [Beatrice is] the most contemporary, most complex, and most interesting and empowered woman that he ever wrote.

“In Beatrice and Benedick you have what I believe to be the most contemporary drawing of gender relations. You have two people who are matched in their wit, in their subversiveness… they both sit outside convention, and neither of them is afraid to do that.”

It’s a perfect pairing, really, that MTC would take a surprisingly contemporary old-world play and pair it with one of the most rebellious directors and creators in the theatre industry at the moment.

“What draws me to doing this piece with [Wilson] is that he is not shying away from the deeply problematic behaviours in the play,” says Bell. “A lot of productions gloss over it a bit, and we are going as hard into the comedy as we are into the social politics that underpin a lot of the toxic behaviours that play out.

“People should come and see this production because it will be like no other version – it is Mark Wilson’s version.”

Much Ado About Nothing is showing from November 14 to December 19 at Southbank Theatre, The Sumner. Tickets are available online.