The music to which this collage is edited is not featured in my production, as we use only music from the 1940s in the show. I just like this track, "Particle Man", by They Might Be Giants from their 1990 album "Flood". It seems to reflect the spirit of the clown parts of the show.

The characters featured here are the clowns who appear first in Act 3 of Much Ado About Nothing, led by Constable Dogberry and his dog Crab. One of the fun things for a director is that I get to create these characters with the actors, as they are not particularly well defined in the text.

They are members of the Watch, whom I have seen as the equivalent of the Home Guard in the 1940s - a rag-tag collection of men not fit enough to go to war, whose uniforms are made up of oddments from all kinds of unlikely sources. Verges, the eager-beaver second in command, has gone for the army camoflague look; mild-mannered George Francis Seacole, the only one of them who can actually read and write, has dug out a pith helmet and ill-fitting army shorts and boots; Hugh Oatcake is totally enveloped in a long black coat too big for him, but turns out to have certain ninja warrior abilities; and Pompey Bum (a name & cheap joke I borrowed from Shakespeare's Measure For Measure) is wearing an old kilt, fur hat with ear flaps and a marching band jacket, and is laden down with weapons from his day job as a gardener - including his trusty spade.Dogberry himself wears a policeman's helmet, a high-ranking naval officer's jacket and army trousers.

Their "high-tech" communication system includes a couple of tin cans tied together with string. You'll see them using them to spy on a drunken Borachio, who is revealing to the audience the evil plot against Hero he has just carried out for his master Don John.

By the way, there is no dog Crab in Much Ado About Nothing. I borrowed him (and a lovely speech for Dogberry) from Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. You'll have seen Crab the dog in the movie Shakespeare in Love performing at Queen Elizabeth's court. And as Geoffrey Rush's character Henslowe says in that movie "All people want to see is love and a bit with a dog."

A performance of the show was videotaped, and then still frames were taken from the video to make up this Quicktime movie collage.

The production is set in Leonato's nightclub in the year 1942.

Another Quicktime video shows images from the lovers' section of the show. You can view it here

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