“This delicious, admirably clear production, directed by Leon, acknowledges and builds on as it gently but firmly escorts the great comedy into a #MeToo, Black Lives Matter world...The actors play specifically black characters, drawing on their own resources of emotion and style to make those characters rich...Beneath the comedy, this production reflects a world in which domestic violence is more of a threat than the foreign kind...Its politics cloud neither the romance nor the comedy.”
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"Shakespeare in the Park's modernized new production of 'Much Ado' is powered by strong women of color...Leon's lucid production starts out frolicsome and funny; Brooks luxuriates in the humor, turning even the pronunciation of Benedick’s name into a punch line. But the show turns wistful after Hero and Claudio's nuptials are scuttled by John’s duplicity...A somber button reminds us that the battle of the sexes and the battle for equality both are far from won."
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"It sings. It flies. Leon and his fine cast have imbued the production with a certain style, grace and spirit...Both Brooks and Coleman bring a special understanding to the text, lifting it above the strict confines of the page and turning it into a kind of sweet music...Chuck Cooper turns the poetry into dialogue that is a marvel to the ear. Nearly everyone else follows suit....What did they do to make it so their own? Methinks it is a soupçon of theatre magic."
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"Leon’s intermittently enjoyable production...doesn’t exactly tackle the play’s extant issues. Instead, it plays them straight and mostly breezy in a world that’s so fashionably contemporary that it throws the story’s fixation on spotless womanly virtue into strange relief...It’s a measure of the company’s big-hearted energy and of the play’s persistent delights that, despite its odd quirks and remnants, this 'Much Ado' stays afloat. Brooks and Coleman’s chemistry is largely responsible."
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“Leon delivers the fun in a slaphappy, dance-crazy version of Shakespeare’s most likable, if thematically troubling, romantic comedy...The entire cast does exceptionally well by the Shakespearean language...Only the comic relief players, go too far, overdoing their buffoonish characters and leaning too heavily on the double entendres...Under the magical spell of theater in the park, no one could raise serious objections to the occasional license taken with the play."
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“Leon's take is sufficiently distinctive and sexy...The ensemble — while at times directed to play the comedy too broadly — enlivens the language with the natural humor and musicality of black speech patterns...Leon plods through the rambling yap of Shakespeare's first two acts without much momentum, but the energy picks up...The twisty road to matrimony for Beatrice and Benedick often gets a little lost here in a busy staging that could have used a tighter focus."
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“Shakespeare in the Park’s ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ Is the Best Party This Summer...Leon and a lovable, fierce, all-African American cast...Making Shakespeare’s zesty rom-com their own, and thereby delivering it to us fresher and funnier than I can remember in ages...Leon directs the entire affair with abundant flair and a great ear for the music of the original text—as well as finding places to insert more contemporary tunes...This is how Shakespeare in the Park should be.”
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“A near-perfect production of Shakespeare’s finest rom-com...While the production references our dispiriting current political climate, the mood is generally joyous, the laughs plentiful, and the focus rightly on Shakespeare’s battle of the sexes...For the most part the...text and updated milieu mesh nicely...At other moments, the plot bangs up against the setting...This ‘Ado’ offers too much joy to worry about vexing questions. For the most part, it makes a virtue of its contemporary touches.”
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