Kathleen Widdoes received a 1973 Tony Award nomination (Best Actress in a Play) for her performance as Beatrice in "Much Ado About Nothing", set at the end of the Spanish–American War (1898), for the New York Shakespeare Festival. The production transferred from the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park to Broadway and was preserved for television. She played other roles for the Festival, including Titania in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". In 2002, she received the Lucille Lortel Award (Featured Actress) for her work in the play "Franny's Way" Off-Broadway. Kathleen Widdoes Kathleen Effie Widdoes (born March 21, 1939) is an American actress.
Much Ado About Nothing the album is also a quotation from the play. The 2014 YouTube web series Nothing Much to Do is a modern retelling of the play, set in New Zealand. In 2015, Billie Joe Armstrong wrote the music for a rock opera adaptation of the play, "These Paper Bullets", which was written by Rolin Jones. In 2017, a YA adaptation was released by author Mckelle George called "Speak Easy, Speak Love", where the events of the play take place in the 1920s, focused around a failing speakeasy. In 2018, author Molly Booth released a summer YA novel adaptation called "Nothing Happened",