Summary 
High-energy musical "hip-hop-tation" of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing performed by a rapping cast of six in a small black box space. Often vulgar but more often funny, this is a clever, entertaining, and original take on the familiar romances and battles of the sexes. Clocking in at just over an hour, a fast-paced flurry of witty rhymes and sight gags amid a throbbing mix of music.
Design
Adapted and directed by The Q Brothers. Scenic design by Brian Sidney Bembridge. Costume design by Debbie Baer. Lighting design by Toby Knyvet. Sound design by James Savage. Wig and makeup design by Melissa Veal.
Cast
Jillian Burfete (Hero, Lil Boi), Jackson Doran (Claudio, Judge), Postell Pringle (Don Pedro, Verges), GQ (Don John, Leonato, Dingleberry), JQ (Benedick, Borachio), Ericka Ratcliff (MC Lady B, Big Jon), Adrienne Sanchez (DJ).
Analysis
A revival co-production of a 2008 success, Funk It Up About Nothin' updates Much Ado About Nothing to modern rapping street culture, with head-phoned Sanchez the DJ center stage, spinning hip hop music behind multi-colored flower blooms strung through ivy. In her baseball cap and low-cut shirt, she works away in silence throughout the show, the tattooed center of the musical milieu within Chicago Shakespeare Theater's intimate upstairs space. A gated wooden fence spans the stage behind her, the uneven tops cleverly evoking the Chicago skyline, and a stoop at stage left leads up to a door next to a family room window. Strips of colored Christmas lights hang over the stage, and a lamp post - graffitied with "Reety P" - balances the set at stage right.
The original script is penned by the GQ Brothers, who co-star as Benedick and Don John - MC Ben and Don J - as well as in numerous other roles, and the production begins with rapping pre-show announcements then a plea: "don't put this on YouTube!" The cast sits in near-darkness upon the stoop like a street gang, chanting "much, much, much ado about nothin'," then rises to rap, their headsets visible as music pounds and they dance and sing. Shakespeare's victorious military leader Don Pedro is here the leader of a hip-hop musical act - "we move when I say so" - returning from a successful concert tour, a tall African-American named Don P, with his posse: MC Ben, Claudio and the black-clad villain Don J.
Neon-colored chalk lines glow in darkness until the lights come up, Don P brandishing a trophy won in the "rap battle" wars. The group dances - "don't touch us 'cause we're electric" - MC Ben boasting of his verbal genius and his "huge...vocabulary," and the boyish Claudio a blond-haired dolt in green and purple, his cap on backward. Their roadie is the bastard brother Don J, a wiry and athletic tattooed outsider in sneakers, laden with chains and attitude. He raps of being "in a funky funk" and his rhymes are coarse - "I'd rather be a sore on the mouth of a whore" - with his signature "funk it up" theme of power chords as he folds his arms in a tough-guy pose, his head bobbing in menacing time.
The women of Funk It Up About Nothin' are the no-nonsense "Hurricane" MC Lady Bea for Shakespeare's matronly Beatrice, an angry-eyed African-American in black spandex and a defiant strut and Hero a tiny blonde cheerleader in pink tights under denim shorts, a pink ribbon in her short-cropped hair. Hero proclaims her love for Claudio to Bea's chagrin - "oh no you didn't!" - and the 1.1 reunion is a series of rhyming raps - "wherefore art thou? Who the fuck is you?" - with Bea wagging a warning finger at Hero then taunting MC Ben: "you can't lick this honey pot." They sing while executing slick Electric Glide dance moves, with Ben and Bea bantering, his "I'm the cunning linguist" against her reproach to Don P, "put this bitch back on his leash." The boys in turn taunt the love-struck Claudio - "her name rhymes with 'blear-o'" - and Ben's characteristic "I'm fly, and I'm gonna stay a bachelor 'til I die." The music halts for some break-dance exhibitions as the white bread Hero turns Bea's waspish finger snap into the "put a little snap crackle and pop in your morning" breakfast cereal slogan.
The 2.1 masque is staged by the Q Brothers as a rave with swirling party lights, the cast dancing and chanting "hey nonnie nonnie." Rap repartee continues - "can I have this dance" answered by "only if you keep it in your pants" - and the multi-talented GQ transforms with a long gray fright wig into the stiffly doddering old man Leonato: "I'm going to retire, my hemorrhoids are on friggin' fire." Bea first insults Ben then flips him off, and the romance between Claudio and Hero culminates in a sappy rock ballad under the spinning strobes from a disco ball, the cast serving as swaying backup singers while the lovers - "you're so delish!" - transform the sweetness of a first kiss into a carnal gross-out of moaning, groaning and groping. GQ returns as Don J with his henchman Borachio to plot the break-up of the couple through the device of a girl similar in appearance to Hero - "we've been known to bone" - before the reprise of the comically evil "funk it up" theme.
The Q Brothers play Shakespeare's 2.3 and 3.1 eavesdropping scenes simultaneously, with Leonato center stage, participating in both deceptions. Ben and MC Lady Bea sing a love song duet, he seated on the stoop, she leaning from the window, as the remainder of the cast appears as backup singers lit in orange as if from a 1980s rock video. The deceits continue - "you were gonna snitch? oh, really, son of a bitch" - then Bea instructs Hero and the women in the audience in sexual allure: breasts "have many uses, but use your cabooses." The Q Brothers move the story quickly: Borachio appears in the window at stage left, enacting a 3.2 make-out session with an inflatable sex doll in a blonde Hero wig as Don P and Claudio look on, then sharing a romantic moment with the doll as they gaze from the window and smoke a post-coital cigarette. The image draws laughter from the audience, as does Borachio's droll remark to the plastic doll: "you don't say much, do you?"
The farcical tone continues with the 3.3 arrival of Shakespeare's Dogberry and the policemen Watch, the flaming-gay Verges a nightmare in white knee socks and snug blue shorts, a clingy top and a motorcycle-cop helmet with sunglasses. The other constables are back-up singers for GQ's outrageous Dingleberry, who wears a long reddish leather coat with a big yellow hat and a walking stick. Part rock star, part pimp, and part sheriff, GQ's Dingleberry sings with a sonic heavy metal screech, his black curly hair a flowing glam-rock wig, and the singers chant "Dingleberry!" like a bad television-cop show theme from the 1970s. The Watch hides to overhear Borachio's confession - "totally different chick" - and Verges, swishing in his fingerless gloves and baby blue uniform, arrests him as Hero appears above and behind the audience for her 4.1 wedding. She marches to the stage, greeting patrons in aisle seats as if guests at the ceremony, but onstage Claudio confronts her - "the wedding is off" - and Don P punctuates the accusation with a shouted "beeyotch!" Bea and Leonato take Hero's side - "where does he get his info, calling her a nympho?" - the latter exiting in amusingly exasperated awareness of the Shakespearean plot devices: "let's go devise another plan."
Dingleberry's 4.2 court judge, a drawling John Wayne cowboy, wears black robes and a wild west hat, twirling twin gavels like six-shooters to his "order in the court" song. Dingleberry the cop - "somebody smell bacon?" - presses charges before MC Ben cold shoulders Claudio, and Leonato upstages everyone as the eccentric old man - "you really screwed the pooch this time, sonny" - hurling a crumpled beer can at them: "get off my lawn, you punks." Hero, embracing a stuffed teddy bear and wearing chicken-head slippers complete with flopping orange beaks, gets another lesson from Bea on how to attract and keep a man, then exults: "goodbye granny panties, hello thong!"
The Q Brothers then begin the conclusion, the show so fast-paced it feels as though it has hardly started. Leonato and Bea snuff cigarette butts into a small black coffin emblazoned with a silver cross, then feign sobs and tears 5.3 for Don P and Claudio. The replacement wife they have chosen for Claudio is a comically obese sight-gag in pink-and-white veils, making hideous noises, a pink pig's snout visible through the veils. Hero leaps onstage, literally hopping mad - "busted!" - yelling and accusing Claudio, first head-butting his mid-section, then denying his apology with a hand held palm up: "no way, home skillet." When Verges appears with the arrested Don J - "it's a Don J barbecue, and you're bringin' the buns" - the rest of the constables strew flower petals for the double wedding ceremony. Bea emerges from the back of the audience in her own wedding veil, and after momentary complications - "fine, forget it" - she kisses MC Ben, passionately pulling one of his legs over her thigh. Ben is appropriately droll - "to have and to hold and fight with forever" - as Claudio and Hero share another graphically wide-mouthed wet kiss. Don P then earns a surprise laugh with a passionate kiss of the old man Leonato as this energetic and clever - if comically vulgar and nearly offensive - hip hop musical concludes with a stirring clap-along rap.