I rarely venture away from live performance in my reviews on this blog, but if the worlds of Shakespeare and
Buffy the Vampire Slayer collide you know I'm going to be interested
1. Since Joss Whedon started running TV shows in 1996 he's been fond of using certain actors again and again across
Buffy,
Angel,
Firefly,
Dollhouse and
Dr Horrible, while constantly adding new faces to the ensemble. It's also been common knowledge that his casts would spend their days off at Whedon's home where he'd direct them in Shakespeare readings. So when a black and white film version of
Much Ado About Nothing suddenly materialised, filmed secretly at Whedon's Hollywood mansion in the break between shooting and post-production of
Avengers Assemble, it was both a surprise and somehow completely inevitable. In retrospect, all these years he's been building a repertory company, but for TV and film rather than theatre.
