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Published 9:15 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026<\/p>\n
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Setting out to do an adaptation of William Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing\u201d is no small thing, but that\u2019s exactly what husband-and-wife team David and Anna Purkey has done for Meadow Sky Production\u2019s presentation of the comedy, performing Friday through March 22 at High Desert Music Hall in Redmond.<\/p>\n
\u201cShakespeare\u2019s mastery of the written word has stood the test of time, so adapting one of his scripts is an intimidating task,\u201d director David Purkey told The Bulletin.<\/p>\n
The story follows two pairs of lovers through a whirlwind week in their lives. Classic Shakespearean hijinks ensue: confusion, misdirection, deceit, eavesdropping and the good-hearted naivete of youth. Some of those tropes are pretty eternal, still turn up in modern comedy, but some potential audience members might struggle with the language of Shakespeare\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe challenge is to entertain and hold the focus of a modern audience while preserving the magic of Shakespeare\u2019s original plot. Additionally, the original setting of \u2018Much Ado About Nothing\u2019 features cultures and individuals from Italy and Spain, and we did not have the proper representation of actors auditioning to appropriately represent individuals from Spain,\u201d Purkey said. \u201cThese two challenges were our primary obstacles when beginning script adaptation.\u201d<\/p>\n
The two decided to let their imaginations loose and change the setting of their show completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur creative team adores adventure fantasy classics like \u2018The Lord of the Rings\u2019 and \u2018The Princess Bride,\u2019 and our script adaptation is joyfully inspired by that genre of stories. Elves and fairies live alongside humans in a rich tapestry of medieval fantasy, and our characters display custom armor, fairy wings and swords.\u201d<\/p>\n
People with modern \u2014 that is, shorter \u2014 attention spans will be as merry as the day is long by the pared-down script.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the chief critiques from modern Shakespeare audiences is the length of his stories, particularly lengthy monologues with flowery beauty and prose,\u201d Purkey said. \u201cWhile we adore the artistry of those moments, we also recognize that audiences aren\u2019t thrilled about a three to three-and-a-half-hour performance runtime these days, so we delicately removed roughly 20% of the total word count from our script adaptation. Of course, the story and plot remain unharmed in our adaptation, but we anticipate audiences will be joyful at our two-hour runtime, including an intermission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Performances are at 7 p.m. Fridays, 2 and 7 pm. Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays through March 22 at High Desert Music Hall, 818 SW Forest Ave, Redmond.<\/p>\n
Tickets are $30 at meadowskyproductions.com\/purchase-tickets.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source bendbulletin.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u2018Much Ado About\u2019 adapting Shakespeare Published 9:15 am Wednesday, March 11, 2026 Setting out to do an adaptation of William Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cMuch Ado About Nothing\u201d is no small thing, but that\u2019s exactly what husband-and-wife team David and Anna Purkey has done for Meadow Sky Production\u2019s presentation of the comedy, performing Friday through March 22 at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2323765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2323764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/\u2018Much-Ado-About-adapting-Shakespeare.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2323764"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2323766,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2323764\/revisions\/2323766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2323765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2323764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2323764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2323764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}