Much Ado About Shakespeare (2024)

In Elizabethan England, a play is just ending at the Theatre in Shoreditch. The audience revel in Hackney being the best place for entertainment, but the Puritans are appalled at their sinfulness. The leaseholders plans to increase the theatre rent are thwarted when the actors move everything to the new site of the Globe. The performers discuss and illustrate the merits, range and impact of Shakespeare and decide to ask him to write a new play for the theatre’s opening...

In 2024, showcasing HMDT Music’s methodology of using the arts across all learning, we created a new show Much Ado About Shakespeare, for our music theatre group I Can Sing! to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first Folio.

Returning to our first opera commission; The Hackney Chronicles by Jonathan Dove and Alasdair Middleton to open the show, was a unique starting point to explore the breadth of the great Bard’s legacy. It enabled us to reuse work that’s original to us to explore ideas of artistic ownership and local history before expanding into a wealth of repertoire inspired by and adapted from his plays from tongue in cheek satire to setting his words to old musical favourites. Our students of all ages responded with great enthusiasm and interest, embracing the stories, emotions and historical immersion the production entailed; not least in the experience of wearing a ruff!

“That was a sensational show – such brilliant performances from everyone. What a triumph putting all that together and to what amazing effect!'“ - I Can Sing! Parent

“Astonishing! Full of surprises, really coherent with great choreography and very witty. The children were remarkably well rehearsed and rightly, very proud of themselves!” - I Can Sing! Parent

Scenic landscape with a large mountain range in the background, a lake in the middle, and grassy fields with scattered bushes in the foreground.
Snow-capped mountains in the background with grassy hills and some buildings in the foreground.
Modern wooden building with a large glass window, set against a mountainous landscape with grassy hills and rocky peaks.
A modern house with wooden exterior and stone steps in a mountain landscape with rolling hills and snow-capped peaks in the background.
A building with a wooden exterior located on a grassy hill with mountain peaks in the background.
Modern wooden building with a flat and angular roof, set in a field of tall, dry grass, with mountains in the background under a clear sky.
A scenic view of a lake with mountains in the background, a grassy hill with trees, and a modern wooden building in the foreground.