I recently finished watching "Nothing Much To Do" over on YouTube. (You can find the playlist here.) It's a production put on by some college students I think in New Zealand. The premise is that it's an adaptation of Shakespeare's "Much Ado About Nothing" but the characters are in high school and documenting this with vlogs. Oh and it's from 2014 so it's a little dated, but I honestly think that just adds to the fun!
The production is really cute, and I think that the characterization is spot on! There's a bunch of Q&A videos with the characters, and I just love all of their answers. The fact that Balthazar loves Mumford and Sons, or how obsessed with "Sherlock" Dogberry and Verges are. Beatrice is really into sci-fi books and Benedick is the perfect mix of absolutely annoying and kinda endearing.
It's also really cool to see how they incorporate aspects of the text into the videos. The scene right before the party where Beatrice is talking about how she'd eat a man's heart in the marketplace, there's a line where she talks about how she'd go to the gates of hell and things like that. In the videos it gets turned into someone yelling "see you in hell Beatrice!" as they walk by. Apparently math class is hell in this case. There's lots of quirky little references like that, it really rewards viewers that know the source material well.
There's also a sequel that they did, "Lovely Little Losers," that's based on "Love's Labors Lost" by Willy Shakes. I'm probably going to watch it, even though I'm less familiar with this play. We'll see if it holds up even then! I think it'll be fun regardless.
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