Theatre Royal, Stratford East
It makes perfect sense. Beatrice and Benedick's verbal sparring in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing is a precursor to freestyle rap - or at least, it's easy to think so after watching the Q Brothers' remix of the Bard's barbed romcom. Not so barbed here, mind you. Funk It Up (first seen on the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008) is pure fun, undimmed by the darker shades of the original. If you want your Shakespeare in hock to unrelenting beats, populated by pimps and gimps, blow-up dolls and globetrotting MC crews - and performed with more zest than a casement of lemons - this is the transatlantic hiphop party musical for you.
It's over and done with in 70 minutes, but this seven-strong Chicagoan company squeeze in as much as Shakespeare did. Its verse is densely packed and it doesn't pause for breath. We meet Don P and his Aragon Soldiers on their return from a rap music tour. Don P's sidekick Claudio falls dippily for their host's daughter Hero: his - and her - gormlessness is ruthlessly sent up. Meanwhile, Lady B prefers her dildo, name of Richard III, to cunning linguist Benedick, and Don John's henchman Borachio is smoking post-coital ciggies with an inflatable sweetheart.
The stakes are low. As Leonardo's reaction to Hero's feigned demise ("I'm really pissed my daughter's dead") suggests, psychological truth is not the company's priority. But, if the show could learn from its own advice to Benedick and Beatrice to "shut your traps and open your hearts", its verbal dexterity - "where'd he get his info / calling her a nympho?" - is always enjoyable. In the Q Brothers' rhyming, jiving, unpretentious treatment, Much Ado is recast as a celebration of soppy summer love, and a sassy dismissal of the Nothings we put in its way.