Much Ado About Nothing

or love's labour's won

Following its hit run at RSC Stratford in 2014 and helmed by Christopher Luscombe, Love's Labour Won will transfer to the West End this coming December for a limited run. Presented as a follow-up to Love's Labour Lost (also transferring to the Haymarket), the play is set at the end of the First World War, with its focus on two men returning from the trenches to rekindle romance with their loved ones. Of course, being a Shakespearean comedy, nothing happens quite as they planned....

A sequel to Love's Labour Lost

Despite the original Love's Labour Won considered as a "lost play", Christopher Luscombe has taken Much Ado About Nothing and renamed it, in order to create a sequel in keeping with the World War One theme. We follow two comrades, Benedick and Claudio, who have survived the horrors of the trenches together, as they return home from the Western Front. Desperate to put their dreadful experiences behind them, they are looking to reacqaint themselves respectively with Beatrice and Hero.

Whilst Claudio and Hero reignite their relationship with renewed vigour, tensions between Benedick and Beatrice remain altogether more combative. These two relationships play out amidst the background of a lavish coming-home masked party. However, a malicious aristocrat, Don John, wishes to claim Hero for his own and devises a vicious rumor painting her as a love cheat. Can Claudio get to the truth of the matter before he ruins his relationship with Hero forever? And will the bickering Benedick and Beatrice ever stop arguing long enough to get married?